I Walk a Little Faster
by MaggieMerc
Summary: "Tell me something English, if Captain America had gone and wooed you in a spectacular fashion, genuinely connected with you on an emotional level and then drugged you, locked you up in a mansion 'for your own good' and faked his death how would you feel?" After The Lady is a Tramp Peggy tries to woo Angie back. Too bad she's shite at it.
1. Chapter 1

He is a dear man and Peggy loves-**loves**-her children, and their home is very nice and the neighborhood is very beautiful.

But she is positively, irritatingly, bored.

Daniel sits across from her reading the paper and he must sense her eyes on him because he looks up. Smiles. Sips his juice.

Peggy is completely bored.

"Exciting day," he asks. Work discussions can be…trying sometimes. She's the director of the largest intelligence organization in the western world. He's an analyst for the newly formed CIA. Their jobs aren't comparable. At his dinner parties everyone assumes she's retired and raising their children (with the aid of a lovely nanny). At her dinner parties people talks to Daniel slowly. As if he were simple.

So in addition to being bored Peggy is also, perhaps, wrapped up in a marriage full of contentiousness.

They do sleep in seperate bedrooms afterall.

She smiles at her husband and sips her tea. "Lovely I hope."

He nods. Tilts his head. Continues drinking his juice as he stares at his paper. "Hey, didn't you used to live next to her?"

He turns the newspaper around so she can see a picture of a stunning woman who was always rather addictively ordinary but never ever boring. Angie.

Now Angela.

Because she's changed. She's not the girl working late at the automat and beating on Peggy's door for late night sessions of "gab."

Now she's Angela-

Angela **Carter**.

Her new film is premiering in New York and according to the headline people are anticipating the announcement of a proposal. "COULD IT BE LOVE" is splayed over the top of the photo. Apparently much of the United States wants Angie marrying some idiot actor named **Tab**.

Oh. She squints. There is actually a bland looking skinny boy in a tux standing by Angie.

It makes something unexpected clinch up inside of Peggy.

Which isn't fair. Angie is free to live her life however she chooses. Peggy's given up any right to comment when she left her sleeping on a couch in front of a grand fire place at Howard Stark's Long Island estate.

"You remember her," Peggy is surprised by Daniel's question. She didn't think he'd had even met Angie- "I remember telling her you died back before SHIELD. She was broken up about it."

Of course.

That would be natural. They'd just spent a night together that still makes Peggy blush.

She dips her ridged spoon into the flesh of the grapefruit in front of her. Eats sans sugar. The tartness claws at her tongue and tries to draw her cheeks together.

She says simply, "We used to drink schnapps together and chat about our day."

She takes the paper from him and studies Angie. She's done away with the girlish curls she wore when Peggy knew her. Her hair is now sleek and styled. In the photo it's in a twist. No doubt to show off the expensive earrings and necklace she's wearing.

But.

But Angie doesn't look **happy**. Peggy can see that. She's a spy. Her training-her very life-has been devoted to reading other people. So she can look at this innoncent picture of Angie Martinelli and know beyond any shadow of a doubt that Angie's not happy.

"I was very fond of her."

Daniel looks sympathetic, "She still think you're…"

She nods. "A necessity. Leviathan and all that."

They can't talk more about it. Daniel doesn't have the clearance to discuss Leviathan further and their nanny is walking in with the twins on each hip, and she still thinks Peggy and Daniel work for the State Department.

She snaps the newspaper into a fold and hands it back. She kisses her children goodbye, gives her husband a peck on the cheek and meets her driver outside.

For half the day she stares out the window tapping the tip of her pen against her chin and trying not to think of Angie Martinelli.

Normally it isn't hard. She has children she cares a great deal for and a job that often consumes her and a husband who…well, they're **fond** of one another.

"How 'bout friends," he once said when she confessed that she'd had enough great loves in her life and wasn't about to add him to the list.

Sometimes she pities her husband. It must be hard living in the shadow of Captain America and sharing a home with a woman very much in love with another woman.

One whom she hasn't spoken to since 1946.

They've a new president now. And Peggy's director of SHIELD. And Angie has an Oscar.

And a Tony.

And fans. Whole legions of them.

She certainly doesn't need one more.

Peggy has a whole cadre of televisions on one wall. They play broadcasts from all over the country. Piping them in and displaying them in fuzzy black and white.

A swath of grayscale passes along one screen and Peggy has to stand. Come closer. Sometimes, from her desk, it's too hard to make out who's on screen.

She looms over the TV sets and her hands are wrapped around her middle and her fingers are digging into her side.

Because there's Angie again. This time it's a **movie**. That dreadful domestic drama that won her her Academy Award.

"Janet," Peggy calls.

Her protege, still in school but too clever to be there long, hurries into the room. "Yes ma'am?"

"I need to arrange transportation to New York."

"When-"

"Immediately."

####

Colonel Phillips (he refused promotion three times before the Army gave up) has, on more than one occasion, labeled Peggy as "impulsive."

"Just because it's right doesn't mean you ought to run off and do it," he's said.

Originally his lectures ensued following her activities with the Howling Commandoes. Now it's usually related to moments when she chooses to act rather than lead. "You're Director now Carter, not Agent."

When he points this out she now notes that she **is** in fact Director and if she wants to air drop into the Soviet Bloc to continue her one woman assault on the Red Room assassin factories that is her own perogative.

Standing in a bathroom at Radio City Music Hall with a confused but ameniable Janet Van Dyne on the door she can hear the Colonel in her head.

He's not wrong in this instance.

Staring at a flesh and blood Angie as she's poised over a sink trying to collect herself Peggy knows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she's being impulsive.

But she speaks up anyways.

Because Angie seems as though she's crying. And apologizing for it like she's done something wrong. "Sorry. I just had a…"

"Successful film premiere by the looks of it." Peggy's impulsive but she's also very **suave**. She once broke Captain America's mind with nothing more than a smile and a nice dress.

Angie looks confused.

That's a natural response. Particularly if the person once drugged you, abandoned you, and then faked their own death.

So Peggy decides to fill in the blanks. She approaches Angie carefully and tells her how wonderful her career appears to be. How she's so proud. How she's so madly in l-

The crack of Angie's palm against Peggy's face is so loud she's surprised Janet hasn't burst in with guns blazing.

"You're **proud** of me?"

Now that Angie's spitting her words back at her incredulously Peggy has to admit they sound condescending.

"Ya think?"

"Oh! Your accent. I'd thought you lost it." She's so formal and breathy in her pictures.

Angie slaps her again. This time with the other hand.

Peggy rounds on her and she suspects she looks upset. "Are you quite finished?"

"I don't know Pegs, I still haven't socked you in the mouth." She balls her small fist up for emphasis.

"I'll take the slap thanks."

"I just-I can't believe you! The gall. And the chutzpah. And the **gall**." She lightly punches Peggy now. But in the shoulder. Peggy barely moves. "Showing up looking like that. Smiling! At my premiere?"

"I had hoped," she sighs, "I had hoped it would be romantic?"

Angie's now giving her the stinkeye-something she hasn't experienced in years. Spies tend to not give one another the stinkeye. It's gauche. She's immediately grateful this meeting is private because otherwise she might be a smidge embarrassed.

"Tell me something English, if Captain America had gone and wooed you in a spectacular fashion, genuinely connected with you on an emotional level and then drugged you, locked you up in a mansion 'for your own good' and faked his death how would you feel?"

She'd have punched Steve into the next decade.

"Right. So how do you think **I** feel. Particularly when I can't help but notice that set of rings gleaming on your finger."

She glances down. Shit. "I'd…meant to remove those."

Angie crosses her arms, "Not helping."

"Angie," Angie sighs. She's quickly getting fed up with Peggy. So Peggy has to forge ahead. "Have you ever felt just-just an all consuming **need** to see someone. To **be** with someone?"

Angie swallows as she stares.

Perhaps it's working? Peggy comes closer. "You…you're who I need."

She's close enough now that she could kiss Angie if she didn't think she'd get punched for the attempt.

Angie glares up at her, lower lip stuck out. She looks more like herself than all the glamour and sophistication that she's become as Angela Carter.

"Then maybe you shouldn't have left me and gone and gotten married."

Well. That will knock the wind out of **anyone**'s sails.

She pushes past Peggy. Her shoulder presses into Peggy's. It's supposed to be a brush off. A goodbye. Sayonara. Do svidaniya.

But they both gasp at the contact. Like there's something electric there.

And Angie stops. They're shoulder to shoulder. Facing opposite directions. Her hand, wrapped in a satin glove, is centimeters from Peggy's own.

Peggy just has to curl her fingers and they're around Angie's hand.

She doesn't look at her. It's like one of them is Veronica Lake casting a spell in that ridiculous witch movie. Looking at one another will break the spell. Usher in the wretched feelings that rightfully consume Angie and have deftly dodged Peggy.

Angie's sharp intake of breath at the contact though. That sorely tempts Peggy. Her whole body thrums with potent need.

"I'm sorry." And she is. She's so so sorry.

Angie's fingers, ever so delicately, brush against Peggy's. She can hear the scrape of satin sliding over her skin. Then Angie sighs and her hand falls away, leaving Peggy immpossibly cold. "You're married and I'm-"

"Engaged?"

She laughs. This gorgeous sultry laugh. Much throatier than anything she'd do in one of her pictures.

"Whatever you're looking for here in New York isn't here Peggy. So how about you go back to your happy life and just think of me as that twit up on the screen."

"We both know that's an impossibility."

"May be. But it's a necessity too isn't it?"

There's a whisper of cloth and Angie is standing in front of her again. So close she might feel the heat of her. Her satin-clad hand presses against Peggy's cheek. "We're a disaster remember?" The corner of her mouth crooks up. "So how about we avoid the apocalypse?"

She reaches up to wrap her hand around Angie's and she takes another step towards her. Angie doesn't back down. She's not the sort. So they're impossibly, irritatingly, close to one another. "I'd much rather end the world with you."

That earns her a genuine smile. The kind Angie used to dole out like the government and their milk for children. "Anyone ever tell you you talk too much?"

Angie speaks softly. Intimately. And Peggy feels obliged to do the same. She doesn't bother to hide the small smile growing. "Not in quite some time."

She very much wants to cross that small distance and press her lips to Angie's. It would be simple and it feels right and Peggy is even doing it-her eyes drifting close.

But she's stopped by Angie, who suddenly darts forward and kisses the corner of her mouth. "See ya English."

Then she's out of the room in a quick flurry of satin and silk and exorbitantly priced perfume.

####

Back out in the lobby Janet doesn't ask Peggy if she's all right. The girl can be quite good at her job when she's focused, and standing at Peggy's elbow she's quite focused.

"Janet," she says-her eyes never leaving the departing back of one Angie Martinelli.

"Yes ma'am.'

"My husband and I are having a dinner party soon?"

"Yes ma'am. In three weeks."

Colonel Phillips has always criticized Peggy for being too impulsive. So, for once, she'll heed his advice. She'll take her time and carefully plan and execute her mission properly.

And three weeks is the perfect amount of time to accomplish it in.


	2. Chapter 2

Step one of her new operation is the simplest step. Peggy calls the President's office and asks if one Angela Carter is on the list to perform at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Why no she is not.

Oh? Really? Well if it isn't too much trouble you should ask her. She sings wonderfully and this new western has made her quite popular with your boss's constituents.

"Oh, thank you so much for the suggestion ma'am!"

If Angie will accept the offer she will then have to be in Washington DC, a considerably smaller town than New York. So if she and Peggy "happen" to run into one another than it is coincidence. The sort that Peggy can smoothly play off as a surprise.

Which is exactly what she does when she "runs into" Angie at the White House a week and a half later. Angie's just met the President and First Lady and enjoyed a tour of the reconstruction of the White House. She's wearing a Christian Dior suit and daringly shaped hat is easily the most stylish woman in a twelve block radius.

Peggy is wearing her favorite blue suit and red shoes and until she saw Angie she was sure **she** was the most stylish woman in a twelve block radius. Now she's excited and envious and also on her way to meet with the President on matters of world security involving a recent "date" she had to endure with Namor, the "Sub-Mariner."

They see each other. Peggy smiles so widely her cheeks hurt. Angie looks startled. Glances away.

Not one to be dissuaded Peggy smoothly steps in front of her. "Ms. Carter, I'm a tremendous fan of your work," she announces enthusiastically. It's odd saying her own name like that.

Angie peers at her a moment-as if she's trying to figure out Peggy's game. Something, Peggy likes to think, softens around the eyes. Then she just dryly says, "Thanks."

"Were you-were you looking for the bathroom? I can escort you." It's a terrible excuse. So bad in fact that she has to take Angie's hand and guide her towards a bathroom before her escort, a clean cut teen in a blue suit and White House tie, can protest or Angie herself can point out how silly the excuse is.

The bathroom is empty. There's two stalls and both doors are wide open. "We've got to stop meeting like this," she jokes when she realizes they're making a habit of seeing one another exclusively in bathrooms.

Angie seems a little more nervous. She tugs at her gloves and then pulls down the bottom of her jacket. Anxiously asking "What on earth are you doing here," as she fidgets with her hat.

"Meeting with the President."

She shakes her head, "You're pulling my leg."

"I'm not. In fact I will now be," she glances at her watch, "two minutes late."

"Then maybe you better skedaddle?" Angie is clearly, impossibly, confused. And her hat is off-kilter. It's endearing.

"I will. I am." She takes a step towards Angie, her sensible heels clacking on the tile, and Angie steps back, her more sophisticated shoes barely making a sound. "I just wanted to apologize. The other day I made a tit…of us both."

Angie's so very even. Just staring. Sharp blue eyes unblinking. "Real tit."

"I should have been more…delicate."

"A little."

"And I understand if you're not keen on-if you're not keen on me. But I would like to hope we could be friends?"

She laughs. Did Angie always have that sort of laugh or was it something cultivated out west? "English whatever we are it isn't friends."

Peggy sighs.

"And whatever we may be? It's not gonna be fair to the fella who's rings you're wearing."

Reflexively Peggy's thumb brushed across her rings. She really should take them off. "What if I told you we were getting a divorce?" Peggy sounds too hopeful about it for polite company.

Angie smirks, "I'd say that was some timing."

There's a half a dozen other things Peggy can say then. Though they're all likely to go as well as this current exchange. "Well. Then." She slaps the files in her hand against her thigh. "I'm sorry for wasting your time." Glances at herself in the mirror. At Angie, who stares so hard when she thinks Peggy isn't looking. "I suppose we should go look for your escort now?"

"Sounds like a plan."

She holds the door for Angie and guides her out. Her tour guide is at the other end of the hall looking deeply confused.

"Hey English," Angie says, smile bright and eyes on anything but Peggy. "You know a Representative Chalmers?"

She does. He's on the Foreign Affairs committee and a frequent guest at the dinner parties she and Daniel host.

He's insufferable.

"We met at a party a few months ago and he's just been absolutely delighted I'm in town," Angie says conversationally. She pushes at her hat again and tries to fix it. Peggy probably should have let her use the mirror. "Keeps taking me out to dinner."

Peggy's plasters on her biggest and falsest smile. "How lovely."

Angie's eyes flicker over her and Peggy thinks, that maybe, she sees a kind of smile. Like she being **put on**. "Apparently he's got a big dinner party he's going to in a couple of days. Would just **love** for me to join him."

It is only through considerable grace and willpower that Peggy doesn't trip. "Are you…attending?"

"Sounds like it could be a hoot. I'm just glad I have a date." They're almost to her escort so Angie turns around and takes Peggy's hand in hers and squeezes it like they're old school friends. She's smiling so brightly Peggy wishes she'd worn her sunglasses inside. "Would be a little funny if I showed up all alone huh?"

She smiles back. "Yes. Yes I suppose it would," she says congenially.

Files stowed under her arm Peggy reaches up and rights Angie's hat.

And Angie swoops in and kisses her cheek. It's all very friendly. Just things friends who happen to be women do. "Next time just send an invitation," she murmurs.

Peggy would be inclined to agree, but she's busy being something of a tit again. It's Angie's proximity. And her voice. And the way she's cottoned on to Peggy's plan.

Unlike some people Angie Martinelli is never boring.

They part and Peggy has to try and turn her mind back to the matter at hand. Chiefly explaining to the President of the United States that Namor has agreed, again, to not invade New York.

It's the third time this year.

####

That night she comes home a little later than usual and Daniel is in the kitchen staring hard at a peculiar arrangement of flowers. They're shaped like a bird.

"Where on earth did these come from," she asks.

Daniel doesn't saying anything. Just wordlessly hands her the card as he continues to stare because it is very uncommon to get something like a foot and a half tall arrangement of flowers shaped like a bird.

There's no signature. Just a neat scrawl that Peggy remembers well from her every check at the L&amp;L.

"How about from now on this be the only tit in the room."

Peggy snorts so loudly it wakes the children.


	3. Chapter 3

Daniel hires a pianist for the dinner party. A young American prodigy with a shock of blond curls sprouting from the top of his head. He sits at the piano churning out Russian concertos with swaggering flourishes. Everyone lingers in the drawing room to listen and murmur quietly around him as they sip their rum tonics and gin fizzes.

Peggy is ordinarily a good host, but tonight she sips her own bourbon on the rocks too often and glances at the door. One shoe dangles on her toe and the heel wags and Daniel sometimes squints at her as if staring will explain her nerves.

He's the only one to notice though. Peggy is, if nothing else, a professional spy. She can hide the nerves from everyone but him.

And maybe Angie.

Who isn't there. And isn't there. And isn't there.

Until she is.

The bell rings forty minutes after the party's started and twenty minutes until the meal is served. She smiles and smooths the skirt of her dress down and walks on steady heels. There's no need to announce that she'll get it.

She's the hostess and always answers the door.

Chalmer's bulk takes up too much of the doorway. His tuxedo pulls tightly across a broad chest and broader shoulders. Were Dum Dum in attendance he'd ask something about what Chalmer's "lifts" Peggy's sure.

"Mrs. Sousa," he says. His voice oil on all her water.

Her smile is tight. "Representative Chalmers. How lovely."

"Sorry I was so late. My date doesn't believe in clocks."

His date is standing just behind him and looks as peeved as Peggy feels. In fact when she catches Peggy's glance she rolls her eyes and makes a face. One that quickly disappears when he turns around to introduce her.

"Peggy Sousa this is Angela Carter, the actress."

He says it significantly. As though Angie were fine Italian leather or a rare wine he procured with ample wealth and power.

Angie smiles, "Why Peggy, it's been **ages**." Her voice is high and bright and Peggy leans into the kiss pressed to her cheek. "Mike, dear didn't I tell you? Peggy and I go way back."

"An absolute distance," she agrees.

"Good! Good. You two can catch up while the rest of us chat. Now Peggy dear can you point me towards your husband?"

She nods back towards the piano music-which has turned into something very jazzy. "The drawing room, just past the gin."

Angie waits for Chalmers to disappear around the corner before stepping in. She seems shy, with her purse held in front of her and her head ducked down.

"Bit of a step up from the Griffith huh?"

"No Ms. Fry is a considerable improvement."

She hands Peggy her stole and deposits her gloves in her purse before handing it over too. "Bet it's a lot easier to sneak in and out."

"I know Howard in particular misses the old place. He was rather fond of devising ways to sneak in, and here he just has to use the front door."

There's something sharp in Angie's bright eyes. "Are you and Stark still…friends?"

"Colleagues actually."

"Something I'm betting my date doesn't know about."

Peggy hangs Angie's things in the front closet and keeps her voice low. "Sadly no. I'm a simple housewife or something equally banal to the people in the other room."

"Darning socks?"

"And obsessing over soap operas. I think I'm supposed to be curious about Guiding Light," she mocking drops a hand to her chest, "but am remaining loyal to Search for Tomorrow."

"See I'm a Love of Life girl myself. Need something short and sweet you know? Can't be weighed down by all that time." Angie's words dance on a razor.

When they step into the drawing room the young boy playing piano stops and stares in awe. Others turn too and Chalmer's barrel chest puffs out. "Ah dear, I was beginning to think you'd gotten lost," he holds his hand out for Angie and she obliges.

Peggy goes and pours herself another drink and watches the party fawn over the latest guest. Their faces are all flushed with eagerness and a little envy and lust and Chalmers puts his arm around Angie's shoulders like he's got a right too.

But Angie.

She's this grace Peggy never would have thought her to have. This kind of goddess come down from the mountain to move amongst the mortals. Peggy wraps one arm around herself and sips her drink and basks in Angie.

It's got to be all that time. It's made her enamored-something Peggy never is. Even when Steve was panting in front of her, a sudden hulking mass of perfection, Peggy wasn't enamored.

Just fascinated. Enchanted. (Maybe a little enamored.)

But Angie's swanning through her party and Peggy is **completely** enamored.

So enamored it takes her a moment to realize Daniel is glaring at her from across the room. Genuinely glaring too. When he finally catches her eye he tilts his head in Angie's direction and Peggy has to smile and shrug.

He doesn't relax when they are all seated for dinner (the prodigy now playing some sweet bit of Chopin) and Angie mentions that she and Peggy were neighbors back in New York "after the war."

"Have you kept up," Wallis's wife asks.

"Not since the Griffith burned down," Angie answers. "I didn't even realize she'd gotten married."

Angie's bright eyes fall on Peggy's rings and then they're dancing around the table, settling on each person that speaks. She's got a way about her-one she's always had-where she can make anyone feel like they're the center of her world. It was something that often enchanted Peggy.

Now it infuriates her a little. Makes her feel used. A little less special.

What an awful thing…

After dinner they gather again and Chalmer's leans back in a chair Peggy likes to read in and rests a hand on the small of Angie's back and tells her to sing.

It isn't an order but it rankles Peggy as much.

Others chime in and Angie smiles in that charming way of someone who's very good at what they do and are about to show off.

She crosses the room and hip checks the prodigy who smiles in that boyish way. "What'll we wow them with," she asks him in a stage whisper.

He wags his eyebrows and the two of them are off. Speaking in a secret language of musicians. "This one?" followed by a flourish on the keys.

"No that one." And then Angie leans over and taps a few more.

Back and forth playfully until it becomes a song itself. Unfamiliar.

Then familiar. A true song plays. Some standard from the late 30s when Peggy drifted through musical halls in a haze of booze and excitement. It's a playful song about a woman who knows a man doesn't love her. People smile and Chalmers laughs and Peggy tries not to flush with ill-conceived embarrassment.

The song isn't about her and she knows it and the way Angie grins she knows it too. She's teasing. Flirting. Looking sated when she sees Peggy's lips finally curve into a smile.

The prodigy's playing slows and twists and turns and then half the room groans because apparently he's moved onto some popular (and hokey) Broadway tune. Angie laughs and sings along—telling the whole world how they kiss in shadows.

Her eyes catch Peggy's and she has to lean against the wall and cross her legs at the ankle. Its like hot fire pooling inside of her and spreading out from the center of her.

But then there's cold water in the form of small feet thumping almost silently on the stairs. She peeks around the corner and sees her daughter and son pressed against the wall and listening—as enchanted by Angie's voice as their mother.

When they see her they blanche and only calm when she brings her finger to her lip and winks.

They all listen together.

Over on his chair even Daniel bobs his head a little.

But eventually the spell woven is done and Angie is bowing out from a full concert and the prodigy is playing something borderline ribald that has half the room in tears.

Peggy motions to her children to sneak back up the stairs but Wallis sees them first and they are both trucked out in a fashion and smile and bow and curtsy for the room. Angie eyes are wide and waifish at the sight of them.

"I didn't know you had children," she says, her voice scratchy.

One of the children declares they're twins and the other hoots agreement and the party all laughs except for Angie who is still looking at Peggy's children with wide wet eyes.

Then Peggy insists they go to bed and announces she'll see them up herself. She suffers the little looks of delight and sympathy the rest of the room shoots her.

"You've got a good wife there Sousa," she hears Chalmers declare.

She's so very good about resisting the urge to turn around and beat him to death with the silver platter on the buffet. She makes a point not to look at Angie as she goes too. Being the good little wife can be humiliating enough without having to see Angie's look of pity.

Upstairs she's feeling indulgent and a little giddy and reads her children a story. They're young enough to like hearing about Babar the elephant from their mother. They can both read a little on their own, but much prefer hearing it all from an adult.

A creak and Peggy knows they're not alone. Someone's come to watch her read. Not her husband. Daniel's walk is distinctive. No, this is heels. A shuffle of delicate and expensive fabric.

She's sure it's Angie even before she looks over her shoulder and finds her leaning against the door frame and watching them with eyes now dark in the dim light.

She's got a ghost of what could be a smile on her lips and all Peggy can do in the face of it is smile back.

When the children realize they have a guest they brighten considerably. The parties never migrate into their bedroom and this is a cause for a (muted) celebration. Her daughter recognizes Angie first and then reminds her brother of who she is. They beg for her to finish the tale their mum's begun.

"You're an actress," her son says breathlessly. Her daughter nods eagerly and Peggy is forced to give up her seat and book to the more appropriate storyteller.

Angie comes from a sizable family and Peggy has it on good authority that she's got many nieces and nephews. Reading a children's book is little more than an acting exercise to her. But Peggy watches raptly all the same. Watches the way Angie engages with the children, blue eyes vibrant. Watches the way she uses her hands and modulates her tone. Angie is engaged. She's **buoyant** and Peggy can do nothing more than watch and fight the warmth unfurling inside of her and demanding she use words like "unfurl."

"Oscar caliber," she says quietly when the children are near passed out and Angie has come to the close of the story.

"Definitely going on my reel," Angie jokes. She hands the book to Peggy and her eyes feel hot on Peggy's back as she kneels and puts it away.

When she rises again Angie's closer. But her smile's gone. Replaced with something intoxicatingly enigmatic.

Peggy jerks her chin in the direction of the hall and they exist the bedroom, her dimming the lights and closing the door as she goes.

Angie's hands are held behind her now and she speaks softly-demurely. "You've got two wonderful children."

There's so much there and some of it frightens Peggy.

"Thank you. I am rather fond of them."

Angie makes a show of looking around the hallway. There's all the prints of Steve's Peggy has managed to find. Her last bit of a life that never was. "And a lovely home."

Peggy agrees. Steps closer.

Angie steps back, her hands and hips brushing the console table right behind her. She's looking up at Peggy who has somehow come so close she can smell more of Angie than just her perfume.

Her breath is a whisper across Peggy's lips.

"It seems rather perfect."

She notes that Angie makes no mention of the husband downstairs. Good.

"Not quite." She's trying not to look at all of Angie. Not to look at her lips. But she's failing miserably.

Angie though, Angie's staring her in the eye. Demanding her attention. That way only generals and Steve Roger's ever could. "What's missing?"

One, then the other of Peggy's hands find their way to the console table. Bringing her close enough that their hips could touch if they like. She's trapped Angie in, but she's the one that feels caught. She swallows. "You know." She sounds hoarse even to her own ears.

As much as she desires it. As much as she feels the need. She will not kiss Angie. Not now. Angie's made it clear. All she can do is be there, taking up all the space around her and daring her to do anything but finish this perilous dance.

Angie's close enough now that when she sighs it's as good as a kiss. Their mouths are open and their lips wet and their breath shared. Just a finest of lines between them.

It's when Angie finally speaks. Finally moves her lips, that it's all over. Just the barest of touches as her lips try to form that first letter. She cannot finish saying Peggy's name without their lips brushing together.

Then it's done. Peggy's holding onto the table with one and and grasping Angie's hip with the other and diving down and consuming. All fire. Wet and hot fire that's burning like good nerves in her belly and reaching out to fingers and toes.

They breathe in abortive messy gasps punctuated by lips and tongues and the graze of teeth.

It's exquisite and right and could go on forever but there are footsteps on the stairs and she forces herself away until her back is pressed to the wall and her hand pressed to her mouth and Angie is looking at her with hunger and trying not to pant.

"Peggy?"

She closes her eyes at the sound of her husband's voice.

When she opens them again she finds Angie stricken and she knows that nothing she can do can get them out of the mess she's dragged them into.

"Coming down," she instead says. Her voice piqued as the rest of her.

"Have you seen Ms. Carter up there," he whispers loudly.

Angie takes one moment that's truthfully infinitesimal but feels far more substantial. Then Angie isn't flushed or breathless. Her thumb and finger swipe over her mouth and remove any smudges. "I'm here," she says. "Was looking for Peggy and the nickel tour."

Daniel frowns at her. Just a moment. He's a very capable investigator and sometimes spy and he's married to one of the best. So he's good at masking things. He steps back and waves down the stairs. "I think your date is getting ready to leave. Something about wanting to see more of you before you left tomorrow."

He says it politely enough but there's still something nasty there under the surface. Peggy feels primeval in her anger and whether it's directed towards her husband or Chalmers she can't be sure.

Angie doesn't look at her as they descend the stairs. Peggy's back is ramrod straight and she's as rigid as a board. Coiled tight with all kinds of emotions that Steve would have been ashamed of and would turn away Angie if she could see them.

Halfway down cool knuckles brush against her wrist.

It **could** be the mere swing of Angie's arms that form the contact but Peggy grasps the touch like a lifeline and uses it to pull herself out of a mire of her own making.

Chalmers is chatty and handsy when they reach the bottom of the stairs. His lips are cold and wet against Peggy's cheek and his hands large and clumsy in hers.

So close he now inspires an uncommon wrath in Peggy.

He helps Angie with her stole and ignores her while she puts on her gloves. She drops her handbag in the juggle and Peggy is the first to the scene. She stoops down and picks it up and their hands touch as she returns it and Angie's fingertips press into the space between her knuckles.

"We should get together sometime," she says. Her voice is high and loud but to Peggy it seems a whisper. As if they were the only ones there.

"I'd love to," she replies. "We could catch up proper."

"Soon." From Angie the word's a promise. Enough of one that Peggy barely seethes when she and Chalmers leave and his hand is around her waist and his lips so close to her ear.

At the car Angie turns and looks at Peggy and takes a breath deep into her chest and smiles.

And for the night.

And the days to come.

That's enough.


	4. Chapter 4

Angie does not return to New York immediately. The local press is breathless when they note she's taken a role in the Captain America biopic and has decided to stay on in DC "for research."

"I'll actually be meeting with the woman Betty Carver is based on," she says.

Peggy's cheek twitches when she reads that in the paper. Daniel asks if she's all right and she tells him how just fine she is.

She doesn't know where Angie's staying in the city and she is sorely tempted, twice, to use the resources at her disposal to find out, but the last time she tried that (when attempting a background check on the nanny) it resulted in Phillips calling her in to explain that SHIELD was not her personal secretary and/or operator.

But she's very tempted to risk it anyways.

Except…except Angie has her address. She **knows** where Peggy lives. She can stop by whenever she like and say hello and she really ought to because Peggy can't be the one doing the chasing all the time. She's got a whole world to protect from the evils of Hydra and Leviathan damn it.

When the flowers are sitting on the kitchen counter when she gets home she has to smirk. They're more simple than the last set. But they're all red, white and blue enough that she feels that silly pang she always does when it comes to patriotism.

There's a note amongst them. "Got any tips for the new Betty Carver?"

It's signed with a hotel name and room number.

She slips the card into her pocket for safe keeping and puts the flowers on the table. When Daniel sees them later he frowns but doesn't say anything.

####

Peggy doesn't make it to the hotel. Instead the next morning she stands in her office watching the news and crushing the card in her hand because Angie's there on the television again. She's ducking down and the flash of camera lights is reflecting off her big glasses and glossy hair and the newscaster is talking about how she's being forced into an emergency hearing concerning communists in Hollywood.

She calls that bastard Edgar Hoover first to see what precisely he's doing hounding a young actress like Angela Carter, but he grumbles and snipes and tells her to look closer to home if she really wants to nag someone.

Peggy considers having him murdered and then remembers that assassinations are unbecoming.

The whole of SHIELD cowers that day as she stalks the halls and lurks over too clever agents and analysts. No one can tell her why Angela Carter is being brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

"But chatters through the roof because of it," Janet finally confesses. "If she isn't already working for the Soviets they'll be trying to recruit her soon enough."

"She isn't." Peggy's sure of that.

Late that afternoon she travels to the Hill to sit in on the hearing. She sits demurely, legs crossed at the ankle, and ignores the few faces around that recognize her. Most don't.

Up front Angie's back is ramrod straight as she answers few questions and refuses to answer even more. The committee is tired and angry and none more so than Chalmers, who growls his way through the proceedings and glares hard at the top of Angie's head every time she looks down at her hands.

Finally a break is called and Angie stands and asks one of her escorts a question. She's stiff as she makes her way out into the hallway and through the reporters.

Peggy's much more nimble, and sifts through the crowd like it were sand. She follows Angie and her escort to a small meeting room. One she isn't going to get into without throwing around a lot of names.

The room next door is open, and after tucking her heels into her waistband and throwing the strap of her purse across her whole body she climbs out the only window, closing it blindly with slippery fingertips.

It's that impulse control Phillips would say—if he saw her clinging to the ledge with nothing but her toes. She's got to work on her impulse control.

She inches along carefully and is grateful the ledge is on the side of the building and half hidden in the shade. Otherwise she's be the one splayed across the newspaper later as everyone wonders who this new Spider-Woman crawling along Capitol Hill is.

Her big toe slips and she has to grip the crevices between the stones a little tighter. She's rather proud when the string of curses that escape her lips are rather short.

And she's lucky that the only one to hear the expletives is Angie, who pops open the window and leans out. She sighs when she confirms it's Peggy.

"You couldn't knock?"

"I didn't want to be forward."

Angie shakes her head and offers a hand that Peggy gratefully takes. "I would have been happy to see you versus the rest of those vultures."

They don't let go even after Angie pulls her in and she's standing too close and the wind is whipping into the room and ruining both their fastidious curls. "I just thought it might look odd, being who we both are."

Angie tilts her head even as the pads of her fingers stroke Peggy's hand. "Who are we," she asks—her voice a thrilling whisper.

Peggy wants to swallow. Somehow around Angie she's finding herself turned into one of those All-American aw shucks kind of boys the world desperately wanted Steve to be.

Instead Peggy comes just an inch closer and revels in the delicious sensation of standing so near. There's something intoxicatingly heady about the way they flirt, all up close and dancing on that razor's edge. It makes it all feel dangerous.

And definitely not boring.

"An Oscar-winning actress." She's staring at Angie's lips. The color she's wearing is demure—her one nod to the forum she's appearing in. "And a—"

Angie leans up and Peggy braces herself for what's sure to be a wonderful kiss—

"And a spy?" It's just a question asked instead. Right before Angie steps back explosively—flinging Peggy's hand away and stalking back towards a small platter of muffins and scones on the table.

Peggy's hands fall uselessly to her side.

"You couldn't waltz in the front because then they'd all think little Ms. Super Spy was a big flaming **Communist**."

"That's not true…" It is, in fact, a little true.

Angie snatches up a muffin and throws it at her.

"Did you just throw—"

She throws another one too.

"Are you quite finished," she begs as she bats a scone away from her head.

"Some big knight in shining armor you are Peggy Carter! Skulking in the back and asking me to do the same. Can't even go vouch for me."

"And how should I do that hmm? Oh Angie's marvelous. She made me come more times in one night than my husband in our whole marriage. Won't you please let her go?"

"I'm not asking you to out me! Jesus Christ. But, you know, telling 'em you know me and I'm **not** sitting in bed making moon eyes at Stalin might be a little bit of a start."

Peggy's quiet a moment. "That's an elaborate image."

Angie has her arms crossed and her body nominally turned away from Peggy, "So's the one of you and your husband, which…" She looks Peggy up and down with no small amount of pity.

"It was a joke."

"Sure."

"He's brilliant in bed." He is certainly not terrible.

Angie sniffs, "I've no doubt."

"You're being—"

"What," Angie asks, eyebrow raised.

Peggy looks down at her shoes, still stuffed into her skirt waist. Between that and the flying pastries and Angie's non-plussed expression she's feeling very foolish.

Angie sighs. "How about this Peg…when you want to help me and not just try to take advantage by consoling—"

"I am doing no such thing!"

"—Me. Then we can talk."

"I didn't just come here to console." She sounds a little petulant but she'd never admit it.

Angie crosses her arms. Actually crosses them. Like Peggy is so shirty customer at the L&amp;L.

"I **can** help."

"Are you going to go tell 'em I'm not a commie?"

"No."

"Then there's the door Agent."

Why is it people only ever used that title when they were irritated with Peggy? It was never a sign of respect, but more like the Margaret uttered by bothered school marms in her youth.

"I could talk to Chalmers. Perhaps he can smooth things over."

Angie rolls her eyes, "He's already trying. Pretty sure he thinks I fold I'll take him with me."

Peggy blinks. "He's a communist?"

"No, but he's so light in the loafers he practically floats."

"Do you often date men who…"

"If I don't want to worry about them getting ideas yeah."

Peggy pulls her shoes out of her waist band and drops them on the floor and then leans against the table.

Oh.

**Oh**.

She's ashamed at how long it take her to work out exactly what Angie's been doing with the line of men she's been dating. It's the sort of sluggish mental acuity she'd expect from Jarvis or her old SSR colleagues.

Angie doesn't tell her to leave again, but she does sit down at the table and poke a scone with her finger and studiously ignore Peggy. When they call for her to return to the hearing Peggy comes over and squeezes her forearm and tells her it will be okay and then hides behind the door like something resembling a big fat coward.

She doesn't—she can't—suffer through the rest of the hearing so she makes her way back to work and tries to understand how Angie came under fire to begin with. Particularly if she's a lynchpin in some sort of homosexual consortium. That's the sort of thing that would normally keep a person far from this kind of suspicion.

Which means someone is setting her up.

####

She thinks about calling Angie from her untraceable office line that night. Angie's life has become a mystery and Peggy feels, for a variety of reasons, that she needs to solve it. But even if her call can't be traced she has to assume Angie's under surveillance.

At home, before dinner, she idly flips through a magazine and bounces her leg nervously. Daniel is oddly quiet when he comes home later than usual, and unshaven too.

It gnaws on her—this question of who is setting Angie up. There are the usual suspects: Hydra and Leviathan and the USSR. Yet the why of it doesn't make sense.

She keeps circling around and around the problem until, somehow, she finds herself sneaking into Angie's hotel at half past eleven at night. It's not the hardest mission she's ever had, but it does require two costume changes, a wig and an American accent that she has it on good authority is terrible.

Sneaking into Angie's room itself is the most difficult part. There's a man that screams "agent" standing at the end of the hall and his gaze forces her to duck her head and keep walking. And walking.

And walking.

And ultimately slipping out a window and crawling around to Angie's room.

She thanks God for small favors when she finds the room empty. Having Angie catch her climbing in through the window for the second time in a day would be…embarrassing.

She's settling down to inspect Angie's room for surveillance when a key in the lock tells her she's got company. Lurking in the shadows she sighs when she sees it's just Angie, all alone and exhausted.

And Angie tenses.

Her fingers curl around her bag as she steps in carefully. Like she knows Peggy or someone like her could be waiting.

She flips the light switch and immediately relaxes when she sees who it is waiting for her. "Thank God. I thought—well I don't know what I thought, but I'm sure glad it was you." She even smiles.

Peggy flips a switch on a device in her purse and steps closer. "Not an assassin?"

"Or a stalker, or whatever. How'd you get in? Because there's a guy on the hall pretending he's not watching me and about a half dozen more down in the lobby—"

"Angie I'd love to discuss the details, but I'm afraid we don't have time. I've just flipped a switch that will make this a surveillance dead zone."

Angie's brow furrows with confusion, her bright eyes wide. "So…shouldn't we have all the time?"

"Yes. If you aren't being watched absolutely. If you are…" She looks to the door, waiting for the shadow to blot out the light and tell her someone's there, "they'll be investigating shortly."

"I don't get it. Why would someone be watching me? I'm not **actually** a spy."

"It's what you said today about Chalmers."

Angie blanches.

"You know things Angie. You have secrets that could unmake half this country if you chose to share them—"

"I'd be taking myself down too."

"Before, yes, but now you're tagged a communist. You've got nothing to lose."

"I've got plenty!"

Her hand strikes her chest when she says it. She's so sure. So positive. Desperate.

Peggy has to reach out and put her hands on her arms. It's not the same as the hug she feels she should be giving Angie, but the contact soothes her and seems to calm the other woman.

"I know you do," she says softly, "but the rest of the world doesn't."

This close its easy to be familiar. To feel that wanting that thrums through every bit of Peggy. Angie's just a little shorter than her, so when she looks up the light catches in her eyes and brings out an amber hue that makes her gaze warm.

She licks her lips.

Those warm eyes settle on her mouth. Then Angie's swallowing and looking back up at her.

She speaks before Angie can say something wonderful. "I need you to make a list."

Just one eyebrow. Angie's confused. "A list?"

"Someone reported you and set all this in motion. We have to find them. Ex-boyfriends. Colleagues whom hate you. Lovers. Former…family connections. All of them."

She tries to ignore the flinch when she says "lovers." Tries not to think about what it could mean. Tries not to think about the last few years and how far they've come and how much they couldn't have.

"Okay," Angie says evenly. She takes a step closer. She can be so still. So smooth. A poker face Peggy's agents would be envious of. "So we make a list."

Peggy's hands are still on Angie's arms and she thinks it wouldn't be too difficult to pull her towards her and kiss her senseless. It wouldn't be difficult or wrong. Perhaps ill timed.

She pulls. Angie comes willingly. She tips her face upward and her eyes start to fall close and Peggy's eyes start to close too. Just so she can enjoy the sensation. So she can have something tactile and memorable.

And then there's three knocks at the door. Steady and sure.

They freeze. So close. She can see the eyelash that's fallen on Angie's cheek and smell the powder she's recently applied to her nose.

"You should get that," she whispers.

Angie swallows.

"Ms. Carter, this is maintenance. We're afraid there may be a leak in your room."

Angie's breathing quickly and while Peggy would like to think it's due to her proximity she knows it has everything to do with the man at the door.

"You'll be all right," she tells her.

Then she does kiss her, but it's quick and meant to comfort and far, far too easy. A kiss dropped onto Angie's perfectly painted lips. She never used to wear such purposeful shades.

Another kiss at her hairline.

"Just act naturally."

Angie pushes away and smooths down the front of her dress and walks towards the door with her head held high.

And Peggy escapes back out the window.


	5. Chapter 5

Angie flees the country.

Not technically.

Technically she is found not guilty and departs to Italy to prepare for her Captain America film.

But as far as SHIELD, the CIA, the KGB and Leviathan are concerned she's fled the United States under a cloud of communist whispers.

Peggy is livid and incapable of doing any more than being livid. She snaps at her agents and stalks the halls and eventually offers to help teach the trainees how to fight-until she's "politely" asked to leave because she keeps knocking the new agents unconscious.

She feels like some sort of animal prowling in her office and Howard notes that she can only get away with being so insufferable because she's "top dog" now.

"I liked you better when everyone just thought you were some girl."

He only avoids a sock to the jaw because Jarvis intervenes and politely, if worriedly, asks why she is so upset.

She can't very well tell them it's because of some woman.

"It's that Angela Carter isn't it?" Howard's smirking over his glass of scotch and slouching too far down on the couch.

She stares at him and wishes she could conjure daggers out of her eyes just to stab him.

"You know I've always thought there was something a little…funny about her."

"Because she doesn't want to sleep with you?"

Jarvis rolls his eyes. "Oh good heavens."

Howard ignores both of them. "I took her on a couple of dates. Tracked her down at parties. Always nice."

Peggy rankles.

"But evasive. Like she didn't want to be there. Like the only reason she was there was to ask me questions." His head lolls so he can look over at his butler, "Jarvis do you know who she asked me about?"

"No," he sighs, "but I suspect you're about to tell me."

Howard points his glass at Peggy and she considers snatching it out of his hands and using it to smash that smug grin on his face.

Jarvis speaks quietly to Peggy, "Please don't." A consumate professional he can always anticipate any violence directed towards his employer.

"She never mentioned it specifically," Howard takes a big swallow. "But I seem to remember something about her taking a nap in my Long Island place back in '46?"

Peggy shoots Jarvis a nasty glare and he wilts appropriately.

"So why's your old 'pal' got you in such a tizzy Peg?"

She says nothing.

He sets his glass down and pretends to look through the files on the table. "Between our interest and that hearing the other day there's a lot of chatter about her right now."

"Is she in danger," Jarvis asks.

"Possibly," Peggy replies.

Howard shrugs, "More likely someone's gonna see this as a good opportunity to recruit her."

"She was cleared of any communist leanings."

"May be. But she then flew off to Italy to work on this Captain America picture. Have you read it?"

She has not. Nor does she plan to.

He nods. Judging by his reaction she probably **should** read it at some point. "Well the Soviets would be crazy NOT to make a play for her."

She sits on the edge of the chair opposite Howard, her knees firmly pressed together so he can't try to look up her skirt. "What precisely are you gettting at Howard?"

"From what I hear," and he looks at her knowingly when he says it, "she can keep a secret."

"I'm aware." Her hand curls into a fist in her lap.

"So if they make a play for her she'd be one helluva asset. For either side."

"And you want her for ours."

"Don't you?"

She does not. What she wants is Angie far away from the world she inhabits. Perhaps not living blissfully unaware of Peggy's accomplishments (she does want her in her life afterall) but, at the very least, a safe distance from them.

Which isn't exactly possible when all the intelligence they have says she is about to be recruited.

Howard's still sipping his drink and looking like that silly cat in the cartoons once it's caught the mouse. "Course she'll need a handler."

"And you're going to propose yourself?"

He looks offended, "Peggy please, I've got no talent for subterfuge." He stands up and puts his glass on the table and nods at Jarvis to tell him they're going. "Besides, I'm not the one she's head over for."

####

It's a smoky jazz lounge. The kind that's all dark leather and darker walls and where the only light comes from the stage, where a woman's wrapped around a microphone and singing old standards in a sultry tone.

The cigarette smoke forms a fog that Peggy moves through discretely. The lounge isn't crowded. Isn't empty either. All the patrons have their eyes on the stage and the waitresses keep their eyes down as they move amongst the tables.

It's a good place for a meeting. Out in Baltimore. Just far away enough from DC that Peggy won't see people she knows. Not unless they're engaged in nasty business…or following her.

Who she's seeing is decked out in a deep magenta dress that compliments her hair colored like honey. She's smoking a cigarette and watching the performance on stage and her only acknowledgement of Peggy is the way she moves over in the booth to allow Peggy to sit.

Peggy orders a drink in a polite and bland American accent and watches the singer too.

"We don't do this nearly often enough," the other woman sighs. She's playful. Always playful. The cat and the mouse again.

"Thank you for seeing me."

The woman smiles. "Anything for you my dear Peggy." She takes Peggy's glass from the waitress and sets it down. The shiny scars on her arm are caught in the dim light but the waitress says nothing. "Now, what is this about?"

She's watching Peggy with those bright blue eyes of hers. She knows why Peggy is sitting in this lounge pretending to enjoy her drink. Yelena Belova is a clever woman.

But she likes her games.

Likes to toy with her prey.

And her friends.

So Peggy doesn't answer her.

"I was shocked to see about our little friend from 3C." She's playing a complimentary tune on the lip of her glass. "I never would have guessed her for a sympathizer."

It could be conversation. But Peggy thinks it isn't.

Yelena couldn't know about her and Angie.

She rests her chin on her hand and keeps watching the stage. Her American accent is so aw shucks. So perfectly Midwest. So much better than Peggy's own. "She always had a crush on you, you know."

"Did she? I never would have guessed."

"Most people wouldn't, but I was half convinced you were recruiting her to your network." So pleased with herself. "So I paid attention."

"Yes, I remember finding you skulking about in her room. Right before you set fire to the place."

"I believe we were both there when it went up in flames." She always looks a little mad talking about the past. Particularly the violent bits.

**Especially** the violent bits.

"But you lit the match."

She shrugs-no desire to deny the truth.

"I need to know what your plans for her are."

"Mine?" She's coyly shocked.

Peggy stares.

Yelena smirks. "I don't work for them anymore. Remember? You burned me half to death and they left me in the cold?"

"You have connections."

Talking with Yelena is always like a dance. One wrong step and you're on her toes and she's furious. Much like she is now-suddenly. Eyes wide and hard and smile replaced by pursed lips and a tight jaw.

"Awfully fond of 3C aren't you?"

"Fond of all the girls we knew back then."

"Oh I doubt that."

"I'm fond of you aren't I?" She rewards Yelena with a brittle smile that the other woman basks in.

If others knew of the games she and Yelena play they'd call her cunning. And too cruel. Sometimes she's playing them and sees the ghost of Steve Rogers standing just out of focus and look so terribly disappointed in her.

The other woman watches her. Scoots close. "How fond," she asks, boldly flirtatious.

"I've shown you before."

So terribly disappointed.

"Show me again." Her knee bumps against Peggy's and it's no accident. Yelena has been trained since childhood to be in complete control of her body, even when she's looking at Peggy like she's a morsel to be devoured.

Peggy puts her hand on Yelena's knee and pushes it away. "Someone's coming for her. I just need to know who."

She laughs. Throaty and rich and cold. "I think, Peggy, that 3C wasn't the only one with a crush back then."

"She's a stranger in our world. I just want to make sure she stays that way."

"And if I'd known about this crush back then I would have slit her throat." She leans in close. Close enough that Peggy can feel the ghost of her breath on her skin. "Ear to ear."

She turns so that she and Yelena are near nose to nose. She can see the freckles concealed by powder. "Well then it's a good thing I've always been better than you at concealing my crushes."

Yelena licks her lips. She's hungry and angry and that's always when she's her most dangerous. Sometimes that makes her exquisite. An awful diversion from so much of Peggy's day to day.

But right now Yelena is a distraction.

"I'm in the cold Peggy. And soon your **crush**," she spits the word out with a contempt it seems only Russians can muster, "will be too. And this winter? It will be brutal."

She pushes her way around and out the other side of the booth leaving Peggy cold. As she walks by Peggy catches her hand and ignores the way Yelena startles and sighs at the contact. "They mean to kill her?"

Yelena snatches her hand away. Slowly. Then leans over Peggy, takes her face in her hand in the most presumptuous of fashions. "Look at the secrets she keeps, Peggy." Then she kisses her. It's cold and filled with as much passion as Russia's Black Widow can manage. Her breath seems cool in Peggy's ears. "They mean to pry her apart and leave nothing behind."

When she's gone Peggy feels ill, and it's not because Yelena has kissed her and she let her.

####

She knows she has to go. If not to save Angie than at least to save the secrets she keeps. Daniel says nothing as she packs. The children lie on her bed and watch with rapt attention. They are all accustomed to Peggy's sudden trips for business and while her husband watches warily and says nothing the children absorb everything.

Sometimes she allows herself to worry about how little she sees her children. How rarely she hugs them or allows herself to fall asleep in one of their beds with them wrapped around her.

She gives herself the luxury that night. Both climb into her daughter's bed and use her as a pillow and read along with the story and Daniel stands at the door and watches with eyes cold like those Russian winters.

Later that night as they prepare for bed, her at her vanity and him in the bedroom, he asks why she's going. **Where** she's going.

"State secrets dear," she replies, using cotton to wipe the makeup from her eye lids.

"Just be careful," he says, and he's frustrated. The way he gets when she keeps secrets he desperately wants to find out.

"Aren't I always?"

"No. You're not." His chin juts out. Like he's saying something profound and dangerous. "Especially when it comes to women."

She tosses the cotton into the trash and stands. "That makes two of us." Walks by him with head held high. "When your girlfriend stops by try and make sure she doesn't sleep in my bed? I just changed the sheets."

They never talk about his dalliances. Just as they normally never talk about hers. It's peeling off bandages they are both normally perfectly happy to keep intact.

"You know, at least the company I keep is loyal to **this** country."

So's the company Peggy keeps.

Even Yelena, that spy stuck out in the cold, maintains allegiances to Peggy.

…Who is loyal to America.

She's not going to engage him. Not going to have a fight neither of them want. Not going to pick at the scabs festering in this "marriage."

She kisses his cheek and squeezes his arm and climbs into her bed, the one just beside his.

"Goodnight Daniel."

####

Very late the next day she parks the car she's taken from the local SHIELD office in the driveway of a very lavish villa at Lake Como.

Because Angie Martinelli's idea of retreating and forming a list of potential enemies that could want her downfall involves first purchasing a palatial villa in one of the most affluent locales in Italy.

Angie, having already opened the gate to let her in, stands in the doorway, hair up, make up pristine, dress pressed, and smirk endearing.

"Hey there English."

Angie is all the things Daniel and Yelena are not. All the good and the simple and the kind and intoxicating and before Peggy knows it she's climbing the stairs and putting her hands on Angie's waist and pushing her back into the door and kissing like the chill of her world isn't chasing them both.


	6. Chapter 6

Even when they'd robbed that sixth bank in two months and half the eastern seaboard was looking for them Angie hadn't been as paranoid as when Peggy slipped out the window while Angie entertained a real life government agent pretending to be a maintenance man for the hotel.

She didn't sleep that night and she'd sort of wished Peggy had stayed to keep her warm and safe. Even if Peggy was probably part of the reason she wasn't safe. Woman had a habit of inviting trouble into Angie's life.

But oh boy was she worth it.

She was thinking how worth it Peggy was when the woman showed up at her brand new villa and stepped out of the car looking just like that cool and sophisticated woman she'd crushed on for months back in 1946.

Then Peggy had walked towards her, heels clacking on the marble, and her hands had dug into Angie's waist and she'd pushed her back until her head thumped against the door and she kissed Angie like they hadn't been apart for near on seven years.

Kissed her like she was coming home and Angie'd invited her.

Gosh Peggy kissed—kisses nice. She's got this way with her mouth that all those boys in Hollywood ought to learn. Angie can't help the way her hands curl and lie on Peggy's waist and shoulder. Can't help the way she sort of crumples and has to be held up against the door.

Because while she's been reluctant to admit it she's missed Peggy Carter and the way she kisses.

But then Peggy's mouth is hot on her neck and her teeth are doing wonderfully scandalous things and reality starts poking at Angie's noggin again.

"Stop," she breathes into the ethers.

Peggy does stop. Always more respectful than any fella. She's breathing hard against Angie's skin and that's almost as bad as those lips and teeth.

"Sorry," Peggy pants and Angie has to look heavenward and close her eyes to try and get some kind of the self control her mom's been saying she lacked since she was five and kicked Father Gillespie in the sack.

"Wasn't just you," she swallows.

She feels Peggy's nose nuzzling that spot behind her ear and she has to put both of her hands on Peggy's shoulders and squeeze. Neither of 'em move away. Peggy could step back if she wanted and Angie could slip out of her arms just as easy.

"Guess you came alone?"

She feels Peggy take another, deeper breath. The kind actors she's worked with take to "center" themselves. "Yes."

God her voice is scratchy and wonderful.

"Worried about me?"

She feels Peggy open her mouth. Like she's about to take one of those playful little bites that'll do Angie in. Her teeth just barely—just barely—graze the skin. But then she closes her mouth and her fingers dig in a little harder.

"Yes."

"Hungry?"

That's when Peggy does lean back, grinning puckishly, with her tongue caught between her teeth. "Why Ms. Martinelli—"

"It's Carter now," she swats Peggy lightly, "and sandwiches. I'm always starving after a cross-Atlantic flight."

"I would love a sandwich." Just like that all the flirting's gone out the wide open front door.

Which anyone could have seen them through.

Damn.

Peggy goes and parks her car and gets whatever spy stuff she's brought with her while Angie tries and makes sandwiches out of nothing but the tomatoes and bread she picked up that morning.

"I apparently don't have any meat," she calls over her shoulder when she hears Peggy come in. "I can fry up an egg if you want. And I hope you brought your own tea and coffee because after the L&amp;L I don't keep that stuff around unless it's a special request."

Peggy's standing there looking a little dumb. Real quiet. Lost. Big suitcase in her hand even though Angie would have figured her for a rucksack kind of woman.

"I missed you," she says and it sounds like its more of a revelation to her than Angie. Angie knows Peggy's missed her. She's missed her too.

She shakes her head and tries to keep the big growing grin in check, "Shut up English."

####

Over fried eggs and tomatoes and toast they talk about Angie's "list." She made it on the flight to Italy and is pretty proud of it.

Peggy, with her astute spy senses, is less impressed. "Who on earth is Rock Hudson?"

"An up and comer. In a lot of the rags right now."

Peggy stops eating so she can reach over and cross his name off the list. "I don't think he's our fink."

"Montgomery Clift?"

Angie shrugs.

"Kat—" Peggy has to put the list down. "Why is Katherine Hepburn on this list?" She glances at it again. "And Joan Crawford? And…Angie Greta Garbo doesn't go out in public."

"What we did wasn't fit for public." She really enjoys how flustered and jealous that makes Peggy.

"I'd think half this list would want you dead just for **making** the list."

"You told me to make a list!"

Peggy sighs, "Of people who might want to harm you. Not of whom you've had…dalliances."

"I'll have you know every single fella on that list was above the belt."

Peggy closes her eyes. Angie actually frustrates her enough to make her close her eyes. Then she takes in a deep breath that makes her shoulders rise and fall. "Right. So we're destroying this. Then we're going to make another less dangerous list of people you've royally pissed off."

"Better put Greta on that list too then." She thinks about it. "And Marlene."

"Dietrich?"

"Real mad."

"Is there anyone in Hollywood you haven't…engaged with?"

"Doris Day. Straight as a board and doesn't like you implying otherwise."

"Marvelous."

"Lousy singer though."

"Anyone who would **legitimately** want to hurt you? Besides angry European actresses you've apparently loved and left?"

"Howard Stark?"

Peggy rolls her eyes.

"I don't know, I mean my whole job is about making people like me. I'd be pretty lousy at it if I had a list of those who didn't."

"But there must be someone…men you've rejected? Studio heads you've infuriated. Actresses who lost out on roles?"

"Grace Kelly is doing just fine."

"What about the element you used to run with?"

"Spies who never call?"

Peggy frowns. "The people with whom you used to rob banks."

"I don't know, I mean I figure if they want to sink me they just mention that. Or how I've never gotten past first base with a boy."

She's kind of clueless as to who she knows that would want to torpedo her and she doesn't want to talk to Peggy about the big married elephant in the room. She figures if anyone really wanted to send her up the river for being a communist it was the guy sharing a bedroom with Peggy.

She sure as heck would have done something that stupid in his position, and she wouldn't have hesitated.

"But I'm cleared anyways right? They said it was all a misunderstanding."

"Perhaps, but unfortunately it's brought you under quite a bit of scrutiny, and of all the high profile women in your…position—you're the one with the longest list of Washington elite on your dance card."

"You're thinking someone might come after me to use me against people like Chalmers."

"Yes."

Peggy's got that awfully serious face of hers. The one Angie likes to link to her being a spy. "Okay, so what do we do about it?"

"For now? Keep you safe. Direct them towards alternative targets. And **don't** do anything that will draw attention."

Angie thinks maybe Peggy hasn't read the script for the Captain America movie, or "don't star in that" might have been at the top of her list.

"Do I get a whole detail or—"

Peggy squares her shoulders, "You get me."

She says it like that's enough.

The thing is, maybe Angie's a little crazy, but for her, Peggy really is enough.

####

After their fried eggs Peggy pulls a lot of crazy equipment out of her suitcase and insists on "doing a sweep." That appears to involve her waving the big metal wands around and staring at meters and nodding to herself a lot.

Angie watches curled up in a chair and tries not to bite her lip because then Peggy will know Angie's finding her really endearing.

And she doesn't really want her to know that. That'll be like she's leading Peggy on.

"So twins huh?"

Peggy's back is to her. She stops her "sweep." Then resumes it. "Yes."

"Do they know what you do? For a living?"

"No."

"And Daniel?"

"Of course he knows."

"But he doesn't work with you?" She figures that from the way people at the party fawned over his position at the CIA and treated Peggy like, well, like the wife.

She laughs, "It was work for SHIELD and I or keep our marriage intact. So he chose the CIA."

Angie's fingers drum against the couch. "And you two had two gorgeous kids and bought that fancy home and the rest is history." She leans back on the couch, pillowing her head in her hands. "It's a nice story."

Peggy's gotten more and more stiff as she does her work. "Yes," she says quietly, "I suppose it is."

"I'm glad you started living in the world Peggy."

But Peggy pauses. She's on her hands and knees with the wand under the coffee table. She's breathing all even and slowly. "The thing is, I don't think I have."

She says it softly. Almost quiet enough that if Angie wanted to pretend she didn't hear she could. But she looks over her shoulder at Angie and Angie knows she's meant to hear it.

And understand what Peggy's saying.

There's a lot she's intimating with a few well placed words. A lot that makes things complicated for Angie. Peggy too.

She doesn't have the heart to tell her how romantic and stupid and impossible she's being, not when she's looking at Angie with those dark earnest eyes after traveling across the world just to keep her safe.

So she goes upstairs to change into her nightgown and robe and goes and drinks a glass of milk to make herself sleepy and when she comes back Peggy's in the sitting room setting up something that looks like an art exhibit.

"What the heck is that?"

Peggy's kneeling next to it fiddling with dials and antennas. "Insurance. No one's currently listening in and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Just be careful if I throw a party. Someone might steal it."

Peggy opens her mouth to object but that's also the moment she chooses to turn around and look at Angie and Angie feels a whole lot of pride when she sees how she knocks Peggy speechless just wearing her usual nightgown and silk robe.

"No parties," Peggy finally says.

Angie can't stop smiling. "How about if I get your permission?"

"If you do presume I've been brainwashed."

They head up the stairs towards the bedrooms, Peggy walking just behind her and trying not to stare.

"The room across the hall from me's the only other one I've got furnished yet. You'll be all right there?"

Peggy will be.

"And you know where the kitchen is if you get up early."

She does.

"Thanks," she says, "for coming."

Peggy nods. Then she steps into Angie's personal space. God the way she steps into Angie's personal space. It's should be infuriating and it almost never is. "If you don't mind, I'd very much like to say goodnight." She glances at Angie's lips. "Properly?"

Angie looks up and tries not to smile anymore. She nods. "Figure you've mucked up all your hellos. So why not a good—"

Peggy quiets her with that too smart mouth of hers. She's gentle and patient.

Almost lazy.

And if she's meaning to remind Angie of their night in the car when they declared it Armistice Day and acted like they had all the time in the world than she does a good job, because by the end of that slow soft kiss just about all of Angie is thrumming and she knows how she's gonna spend the first fifteen minutes before bed.

Peggy's thumb is on Angie's chin. Fingernail brushing her lip. "Goodnight."

It takes all of Angie, all the bits that she's learned how to gloss over and fit into the mould Hollywood built, to not keep Peggy standing right there nearly pressed against her.

"Night," she sighs.


	7. Chapter 7

They go two entire days without touching one another (with the exception of toe curling goodnight kisses that Peggy always offers and Angie always accepts).

Peggy is a patient woman and Angie's still pretty peeved about being abandoned for years and years. She spends her time in the garage working on re-gearing her brand new XK120 and then taking pictures to send back to the States to make her brother jealous.

Peggy whittles away the hours stalking through the house and following Angie but pretending she isn't. Angie suggests she reads a book and Peggy frowns, but Angie finds her thumbing through some James Joyce she tends to carry with her when she travels.

Her publicist once asked if it was to make her look smarter if her luggage was stolen, but she just likes his work. It's somehow easy to read. Relaxing.

Less so for Peggy. Her brow's all wrinkled as she tries to suss out whatever's happening on the page in front of her, but she still hears Angie's bad attempt at sneaking up.

"You know Steve was always raving about Joyce, but I really don't see the appeal."

Angie's not gonna tell Peggy how that makes sense to her. Peggy likes structure.

"How's your attempt to destroy a car going?" She's still hasn't stopped frowning at the page.

"Pretty great. We can take it for a spin tomorrow if you've got nothing else going on."

"Barring assaults by government-trained assassins my calendar is free."

Angie motions to the part of the couch Peggy's resting her stocking-clad feet on and Peggy starts to swing her legs around and away, but Angie sits down and pulls them back into her lap.

She feels Peggy go rigid. Then relax.

She digs her thumb into the meat of Peggy's foot and watches the way she tries not to enjoy it and fails miserably. "This whole spy thing doesn't seem so hard. Just a lot of sitting around reading other folks' books."

She hasn't washed her hands, just gone at them vigorously with a rag and they're dark with grease. Make Up will have a fit when she shows up to shoot the picture. They don't leave any streaks on Peggy's hose though. She wonders if that's spy tech.

Peggy pulls one foot away and presses it into Angie's thigh while dropping the other into her hands. It's nice. "I look forward to hearing your comments should assassins come in the night." She pinches her thigh with her toes. "And I've been to bed late and up early conferring with agents."

"Conferring," she says with a grin.

Peggy tosses the book aside and falls backwards on the couch with a playfully dramatic groan. "I'm beginning to feel like a bit of a tit. I honestly thought someone would have tried something at this point."

"I'm not gonna complain." She slaps Peggy's calf and pushes herself up. "Come on. I got a late lunch with my new director in town and then you have to buy me so many drinks you're driving the car back."

Peggy is very good natured about being demoted from world class spy to Angie's chauffeur. Angie thinks it's because she likes how Angie looks all dressed up. She keeps eyeing her and then staring at the road until, inevitably, she's back to eye Angie again.

The director, Antonio Parma, is shooting his flick in Italy for a lot of reasons. One of the biggest being that most of Hollywood wants to murder him for being a pretentious upstart jackass. But he also knows how to sell tickets, and he's so pleased to have **the** Angela Carter in his picture that he takes off his dumb little hat when he sees her and pulls out her chair for her when the sit down.

He doesn't take off the stupid sunglasses though. That's his "thing" and even the staff at the restaurant knows not to mention it.

He ignores Peggy too. Instead talking to Angie in rapid fire Italian about all the idiotas he's been dealing with. The way Peggy frowns and then glares at him hard enough to set the pomade in his hair on fire tells Angie that she's got at least a decent grasp of Italian.

She brings Peggy into the conversation by hinting that maybe, possibly, she knew Captain America during the war. Which is when Antonio then passionately explains **his** take on America's Greatest Hero.

And Peggy looks like she's gonna flip the table.

Angie can't resist another dig—just to watch Peggy squirm. So she brings up Betty Carver.

And has to quickly leave the table to "powder her nose" because if she sticks around any longer she's either gonna die from holding back the guffaws or Peggy's gonna stab her and Antonio both with her fork.

The problem is when she comes back out of the bathroom a warm hand grabs her wrist and tugs her into the little phone booth by the toilets.

Peggy just sort of **looms **that close. Hovering over her all hungry and angry. "Was that really necessary," she asks. Her cheeks are a hot pink with annoyance and Angie just has to reach up to touch them.

"He still alive?"

"Unfortunately," Peggy growls. "And he's not who you should worry about."

Her thumb drags across one cheek and Peggy leans into the touch then twists her head like she's gonna catch Angie's thumb in her mouth before catching herself and fitting Angie with a cooler glare.

"Was it," she asks again. "Necessary?" She almost looks pained.

And Angie almost feels bad. Because, if she wants to be honest, she knows enough about Peggy and Captain America to know that teasing her isn't very nice. It'd be like teasing Angie about that leg that disappeared off her brother.

She swallows and pushes back against Peggy with her hips. There's a short gasp and then Peggy's pressed up against the wall and Angie's looking up at her and her thumb is still at the corner of her mouth.

She starts to kiss her. **Wants** to kiss her. But she can't. So she steps back until she's against the other wall of the booth.

Peggy is breathing fast again too and she's looking at Angie like she was created by James Joyce.

God what she'd give to be read like that by Peggy for the rest of her days.

They go back to the table and Peggy swirls her drink around by the straw and smiles politely often while Angie continues her conversation with Antonio. Then he bids them adieu with mentions of a needy mistress (and a wink in Angie's direction) and they walk him to his car where Angie kisses both his cheeks and holds his hands and tells him they'll do great things together and Peggy coughs too much into her hand and walks towards the shore.

"Amazing how you didn't sock 'em," Angie says when she catches up with her.

Peggy rubs her knuckles. "I seriously considered it. That man is insufferable."

"From my experience most guys are."

"And Betty being torn between Steve and Bucky? It is the bloody Arthurian Cycle!"

Angie figures she shouldn't tell her about the ending where it's just Betty riding a boat back to America while clutching a locket with both their faces in it.

"Also as irritating as Sergeant Barnes was he **wasn't** a communist. And he and Steve…is he really going to insinuate they were in love with each other?"

"He thinks it'll play big at Venice."

"Well no offense but I hope it tanks and takes his career with it."

She shrugs, "All I know is it's the only role I've been offered lately where I do more then look sad and die at the end." That's only half true. She's also been offered two romantic comedies where she plays a virgin madly in love with a lothario who loves her back but they can't be together because of ridiculousness. She's pretty sure one involves her working at a zoo and being half in love with a gorilla.

Peggy steps closer. Close enough that their arms brush and the pads of her fingers graze Angie's knuckles. It's like she's about to take Angie's hand in hers but then she's suddenly going all stiff and turning around and smoothly putting herself between Angie and what appears to be…a sixteen year old girl.

"Can I help you," Peggy asks, her Italian rough and cold. Sort of haughty when coupled with that imperious tilt of her chin.

It's better Italian than Angie expected.

The girl startles, and looks from Angie to Peggy and back again with wide blue eyes. "I'm s-sorry," she stutters. In English. Real English like they can't even teach outside of the States. "I just…I saw you and you're Angela Carter right?"

A fan. She lets her hand fall on Peggy's forearm to stave any kind of violence she's ready to unleash on a poor tourist teenager. "I am," she says, carefully modulating her voice just like they sat down and taught her when she first got out west. "I suppose you've seen my work?"

She hopes Peggy doesn't catch that Angela Carter is really just Angie doing a bad Peggy impression with a little hoity-toity Upper East Side thrown in.

"Oh gosh yes," the girl says. "I must have seen Two Tears For Edward half a dozen times."

Yikes. But as melodrama goes she's sort of proud of it.

"That's one of my favorites too." She smiles at the girl and patiently waits for her to pull the paper and pen out. Because they always pull that paper and pen out.

"You sound like you're awfully far from home," Peggy suddenly interjects. "What brings you all the way to Italy?"

"My family likes to vacation here." The girl barely glances at Peggy.

"And where is your family?"

Angie squeezes Peggy's arm again. "Did you have something you wanted me to sign?"

The girl brightens considerably and then starts rooting around in her little purse. "Just wait 'til the girls back in Lincoln hear about this. About nobody will believe I met **the** Angela Carter on vacation."

"Do you have a camera? You could always take a picture."

Peggy huffs and she's pretty sure she rolls her eyes too.

"Could we?" The girl's so excited. And earnest. It's really very sweet. But then she's turning near as red as her hair. "I'm sorry. Sorry. I just, my camera's back where we're staying."

"Maybe next time then."

"Sounds wonderful," Peggy chimes in.

Angie ignores her and writes the girl a little note on the pad of paper stolen from the girl's hotel. She even addresses it to the girl. "Natalie's such a pretty name," she says.

The girl just grins and then asks for a hug and when Angie gives her one she thinks Peggy might murder one or both of them on the spot.

Politely, she waits until the girl's dashing back along the beach and waving her fresh new autograph in the air at her confused parents before she lays into Angie like she's a baby.

"You can't just go around hugging strangers."

"She's a kid."

"I once saw a **kid** stab Dum Dum Dugan through state of the art armor. What if that girl were an assassin?"

"She would have killed us earlier. Like when you were trying to hold my hand and didn't notice her until she was right behind us."

Peggy flushes and goes so red Angie thinks she should compare her to a beet.

"Oh look," Peggy says, "actual assassins."

Angie falls for it hook, line, and really stupid sinker because she actually looks around for guys with guns and it's just the distraction Peggy needs to grab her hand and tug her into a tiny boat house there on the shore.

"Lot of assassins in here," Angie asks, smarting from being so gullible just then.

Peggy nods, taking Angie's face in both her hands, "Tremendous amount." She lays one of those claiming kind of kisses on Angie's lips that shouldn't make her as hot and bothered as this one does. She blames it on the kisser.

Her fingers hook on the belt loops in Peggy's dress and she tugs her hips closer just so there's something nice and delicious going on downstairs.

She earns a toe curling moan for her trouble and when Peggy tries to break away to do that thing to Angie's pulse point she must still remember from the car all those years ago Angie doesn't let her. Just keeps on kissing her and holding her there.

She feels the way Peggy gets real solid when she figures out what's happening and she wonders if they're gonna have out what they keep dancing around, but then one of Peggy's hands is moving to cup the back of Angie's head and the other is falling politely on her shoulder and they're just kissing.

Easy.

Like getting reacquainted.

Shaking hands even.

It's nice.

And it goes on way longer than it ought to.

####

They're walking towards the house from the garage and Angie's thumbing through some new pages Antonio gave her and Peggy is fiddling with the strap on her purse and they're both trying not to look so damn happy about the boathouse.

Both acting like they don't want to go right upstairs to the bedroom and finish what they've started.

Then Peggy's hand slides into her purse and she nods back towards the garage. "You need to go back to the car."

"Why?"

Peggy's studying the villa. It looks about the same as usual. "Someone's inside. Start the car and if you see anyone but me drive."

She starts to say Peggy's name as some kind of weak protest but Peggy looks at her like she's made out of knives welded to steel and Angie's not gonna fight with that.

With Peggy.

So she goes back to the garage and sits in the car and drums her fingers against the steering wheel and feels awful.

It's not like being sixteen again.

She was always too dumb to really be worried then. At least before her brother lost his leg and her cousin got creamed.

Then it was those same kind of nerves she got when she'd kiss a girl. She always felt light. Felt like she was vibratin' full of something.

Now. Now sitting in her car the nerves are an anchor pulling the whole mess of her down into the floorboard. She keeps one foot resting on the brake, the other on the clutch and her fingers on the shift.

She should get a gun. Or get Peggy to get her a gun.

They should **both** have guns and she should learn to do more than close her eyes and squeeze the trigger and pray.

She ought to be able to do more than sit in the car too.

With the boys she was part of the plan. She was casing the escape route and knowing how to keep them alive.

With Peggy she's just the damsel waiting in the wings and she wants to wallop something with a bat.

####

Peggy does come for her. Eventually. Gun put away. Purse forgotten. Hair all mussed after Angie made sure to fix it in the boat house. That lipstick she'd watched her reapply as she fixed her own hair all gone too.

Her foot accidentally hits the gas and the engines roars.

"It's all right," Peggy says.

Angie's pretty sure it isn't, but she gets out of the car and goes inside and notices how Peggy keeps herself between Angie and the new house guest.

"Wow," she says when the other woman steps out of the shadows like a creep. "Dottie Underwood back from the dead. Miriam's gonna flip her lid."

Dottie has a tight smile that reminds Angie of a rabid dog baring its teeth. "Angie," she says too sweetly, "it's so wonderful to see you still alive."

Peggy clears her throat. "Dottie's been doing some of the legwork for me and has come to help out as she can."

Might have been doing plenty of other things too. Angie feels like thumping herself because she never figured Dottie for the lavender set and she's usually real good at that.

"So you two…work together?"

Peggy's got a look on her face like she or Angie farted. Dottie smiles in a real irritating way. "Is that what she told you?"

"We do other things than talking all the time."

Now Peggy's closed her eyes.

And Angie's feeling like she's useless out in the car all over again. Also like she wants to smack herself in the face. Especially with the way Dottie—Dottie from **Iowa** is smirking at her.

"So," she claps her hands together. "I've got an actual day of actual work ahead of me tomorrow and am going to go to bed. You two have fun with your little Hitchcock thriller okay?"

She makes her way out of the room as fast as she can without obviously running and her ears burn when she hears Dottie's laugh chase her out.

God.

She's an idiot.

A big dumb idiot.

Dottie from **Iowa** is some kind of hyper-capable spy and Angie cries on command and gets paid for it.

She hides away in her bedroom and reads James Joyce to feel superior (and fall asleep). A little later she hears their voices in the hallway and someone laughing and a door shutting.

She has to pull her pillow down on top of her head. Partly to avoid hearing any sounds she doesn't want to hear, but mainly just on the off chance that if she dies the assassin won't have to see how silly and mortified she probably looks.

But when she's still not asleep because she's too busy in pillow pity party, her bedroom door opens. And closes. And when she peeks out from under her pillow she finds an exhausted Peggy, gun drawn, trying to make herself comfortable in front of the door.

She calls Peggy's name and feels a little less embarrassed when Peggy freezes.

"I thought you were asleep," Peggy says, rising back up.

"Too busy feeling like an ass to sleep."

Peggy comes over to take a seat on the edge of the bed, her pistol settled in her lap. "You weren't an ass."

Angie glares.

"You were a little bit of an ass. But it's been going around an awful lot lately."

She has to duck her head and grin because Peggy's not wrong. She reached over and scratches at the fabric of Peggy's dress. Right where it's gathered at the knee. "You gonna explain why you're camping on my floor."

"Dottie thinks we're sleeping together."

"Okay." She wants to act like she gets it. She really doesn't. Especially when Dottie would figure it out after seeing all Peggy's stuff in the other bedroom.

Peggy sighs, "And I don't trust her. Ever."

Oh. Right. She feels a little cold all of the sudden. "You think she's gonna kill me?"

"I don't know. I hope not." Peggy can admit stuff like that casually. "But Angie you must know, whatever her intentions might be I won't let her hurt you."

"You've been making that promise a lot lately." Angie says it reflexively. Not like she means to hurt Peggy. She just feels like she's got to say it.

She regrets it when Peggy flinches. So she reaches out before Peggy can apologize or stand up and she takes her hand and pulls her so she's half on top of Angie. The gun ends up close to her head and she can smell the tang of oil.

She kisses Peggy. All careful and slow. Just until Peggy stops feeling so skittish against her.

"Might be safer if you're **in** the bed then English."

Peggy smiles against her lips.

They don't do anything more than kiss. A possible assassin one door over kind of cools any ardor Angie might have lurking. But Peggy does lie in the bed, and she pulls Angie over until her head's resting on Peggy's breast and puts an arm around her and keeps the other arm close to that gun.

As terrifying as it is to sleep that close to something awful Angie'll be the first one to admit that falling asleep in Peggy Carter's arms is about the closest she's ever gonna get to bliss. So when she does fall asleep its with a warm heart beating against her ear and a smile on her lips.


	8. Chapter 8

Dottie Hayseed the super spy has been enjoying Angie's hospitality for two straight weeks. Every morning she's downstairs before Angie, buttering her toast and smiling too sweetly, and every night she read Angie's books under the glow of the lamplight as Angie trudges up the stairs to bed.

Peggy insists Dottie's some kind of super assassin that can kill you with a pen, but Angie's pretty positive that if she's not gone soon she's gonna take one of her wrenches to her all the same.

The only bright side of it is the juvenile side of it. Peggy sleeps in Angie's bed every night.

Every night.

Peggy wears pretty silk nightgowns when she goes to bed and she puts her hair in pins to maintain her curls when she doesn't want to wash it.

She always smells nice too, lying still on the other side of the bed.

They don't cuddle. Angie's never been a cuddler and Peggy doesn't strike her as one either. They don't kiss either. Usually because most days Angie's too busy vacillating between murder and embarrassment to muster up some lust. But at night she can fall asleep listening to Peggy's steady breathing and pretend like she's not furious and besieged.

Okay.

Sometimes they kiss.

But it's all friendly and casual. Just a step up from friends.

Until the day they're an hour away from the villa on the set of Captain America and they're the only ones in her trailer and she's running lines and Peggy's reading Tolstoy.

In Russian.

The scene Angie's working on, all on her lonesome because Holden likes to "prep alone" and Curtis is busy flirting his way through northern Italy, is the big romance scene where she and Bucky kiss and Captain America sees and is horrified but ultimately gives them both his blessing.

Peggy listens.

And sighs.

A lot.

She finally grumbles, "I feel rather like I'm being tortured for something I did in a past life."

Angie doesn't point out that she's torturing her a little for stuff she did in this life. Like leaving her. And bringing Dottie Hayseed the super spy into her home. She comes closer and puts way too much into her lines.

Which really are, honest to God, just "Oh Bucky. Bucky. Bucky!" Then she collapses onto Peggy's, arm thrown dramatically over her eyes.

When she peeks out she finds Peggy still glowering and her book held high in both arms. "Are you quite done?"

"I don't know Cap," she's still doing the voice, but it's starting to pull at Peggy's lips like she's gonna smile. "Can any one of us ever be done? When we're torn between love and duty and…" she takes a deep breath and throws herself backwards again, "war."

Peggy promptly drops her book, flings Angie's script away, and gathers her up to kiss her just like one of the boys in the pictures. The kind where she stares deep into Angie's eyes and and awkwardly strokes her hair before mashing her face into Angie's.

It is **not** the way a girl ought to be kissed.

Angie starts laughing against Peggy's firmly closed mouth and has to slap on her shoulder to get her to let go. "That was awful," she says, rolling off Peggy's legs and onto the floor. "Forget Tony Curtis you ought to be out there playing Bucky."

Peggy hums. "My Cary Grant impression's much better." Tony's likes to do the impression between takes. William Holden has threatened to beat him over the head with one of the empty bottles littering his trailer.

Angie thinks it's a joke.

Peggy does't.

"Besides if I took the job it would all go wrong."

"Because you're a lady?"

Peggy shakes her head. She's…rueful. That's the best way to describe it. Maybe. "Because I might be tempted to kiss you properly."

Angie sits back up. Perks a little too. Being on the floor still she has to look up at Peggy and crane her neck to say flirtatiously, "Nothing's stopping you now."

"No," she reaches out and pulls Angie back towards her. "I suppose nothing is," she murmurs against Angie's lips.

An hour and change away from Dottie Hayseed the super spy makes it's awfully easy to kiss Peggy. To forget why she's mad or scared. To hold onto biceps that always feel harder than she'd think they would and revel in the little gasps she earns with her teeth and tongue.

Being all alone in the trailer also makes it real easy to stand up and straddle Peggy and push her down into the cushions on the bench. To run her hands up and down Peggy's sides before playing with the buttons of her shirt.

Two buttons slip free of their holes and Angie's fingers sneak in. The pads of them stroke smooth skin and she has to swallow Peggy's groans.

Her thumb's working on button number four. Or five? She can't be sure as much as she'd like to be. When some miserable AD bangs on the trailer door and tells her she's wanted on set.

She pulls back and Peggy lurches forward, nipping at her lips. "You can't stall?" God her voice got throaty real fast.

She nuzzles her nose. "Love to, but they're gonna be steaming mad as is on account of my lipstick."

Peggy hums again. Steals a kiss. "Worth it though."

It's a statement on Peggy's side, but Angie treats it like a question. "Absolutely."

####

She's in town buying food for a dinner that she's not admitting could be romantic, but is kind of hoping will be romantic.

Dottie Hayseed the super spy is gone for the rest of the week. Left to "do a job" that Angie is worried involves murder and Peggy is positive involves murder.

While she's a little upset that Peggy's so cool with a crazy super spy killer she's also pretty excited about having the place reclaimed after more than two weeks of a guest.

Its just gonna be her and the married woman she's half-heartedly shacking up with.

She's gonna go to heck **and** hell for that one.

Angie's not a cook like all the girls back home. In fact it was usually a point of pride that her brother's better in the kitchen. But she feels like she ought to commemorate the occasion.

And if things were to happen.

If they were to get carried away and just start doing…stuff. Stuff she hasn't outright avoided but hasn't really invited up until now.

Well.

Okay, Angie's all right with that.

God. The way she was watching Peggy do nothing more than play with her hair as she ate her toast that morning means she'd be a lot more than all right with that.

How the heck could a woman hair that shiny? And keep her nails that perfect? And have hands that fine. And—

She's gotta get a hold of herself. A crush on Peggy Carter is what started at least some of the problems in her life to begin with. Another crush now, with them older, isn't gonna help.

Not when they're a movie star and a married spy.

Nothing but cold showers and a whole other life are gonna help **that**.

She rushes into the market, head down and scarf up, and she's so stupidly busy thinking about Peggy and how she shouldn't be thinking about her that she runs into the girl rushing out of the market.

And by "runs into" she actually smacks into the girl so hard that the poor thing ends up on the tile, blue eyes wide with shock.

It's her fan. Which makes her happy to still be wearing her sunglasses, because as soon as Angie sees her she rolls her eyes.

Of course it's be this could.

Being polite she reaches down to help her up, schooling her voice to sand away all the rough New Yawk edges. "Oh my, are you all right dear?"

She is. Or she seems to be, but when she's standing the neck of her sweater, one of those high necked sleeveless numbers that Angie has a dozen of in the closet, tugs down and Angie sees something that…well it makes her **mad**.

And the thing is, Angie's not the kind of gal—woman who gets mad. She gets irritated. Sure. She'll thump or slap or even punch a person. But then she's over it. She's done.

But the dark splotching of bruises the girl's wearing as a necklace have her feeling that murderous instinct Peggy seems to feel on a day to day basis.

The girl just says she's fine though. Insists it with a watery smile.

So Angie makes her join her to shop and she pokes holes in the flimsy story the girl gives her.

So maybe her parents have been busy.

Or maybe, actually, her mom's in Milan for the next two weeks.

And maybe it's just her.

Okay her and her dad.

He just had too much good Italian wine is all.

And maybe Angie wants to drive out to his villa and poke a hole through him and his house with her car.

"How would you like to join me for dinner tonight," she says instead.

She's clumsy trying to balance all the anxious emotions of having a dad like hers with the excitement of being invited to dinner by **the** Angela Carter.

Still, the girl, Natalie, thinks it's a swell idea.

Peggy thinks otherwise when they stumble into the house with arms full of groceries.

"You can't just take in every stray that crosses your path," she hisses while shredding lettuce for dinner.

Natalie's in the other room plinking out some concerto on the piano.

"I don't take in strays," Angie hisses back. "And I'm not the one who turned this into the house for wayward spies for the last few weeks."

"Yelena's different. And you do too!"

She stops chopping garlic to glower at Peggy. "I do not. I, in fact, **hate** cats."

"And what was that with the classified and puppy dog eyes back at the L&amp;L then?"

Okay. Peggy's got her there.

She does.

On occasion.

Take in strays.

"This one's different," she sniffs.

Natalie's watching them from the other room as she stumbles through something on the piano. Got that shy and nervous look.

Peggy smirks. "I know. The crush is rather one-sided this time."

She slaps her shoulder with the back of her hand, "Stop," she laughs. "That kid's in trouble. She needs help."

"And you're the one to do it?" Peggy's got a funny look on her face that Angie can't quite pin.

She goes back to chopping garlic. That's the one bit of cooking she's good with. All the knife stuff. Her dad used to watch her work and kiss her on the cheek and call her his little tomato killer.

Then she started robbing banks and he just frowned all the time.

Peggy leans on the counter and studies their guest. She plucks a piece of lettuce out of the pile she's made and pops it into her mouth. "I could talk to her father if you like."

"I'm not crazy about answering violence with violence English."

She looks scandalized, but its more a gag than anything real. "I'm not **always** violent."

"Just every moment between waking up and going to bed."

She throws the garlic into the pan and watches it hop and brown in the oil. Peggy keeps leaning on the counter, one heel bouncing. Her eyes are still on the girl. Still a little too dark.

"I'm sorry," Angie says quietly, never looking up from the garlic.

But out the side of her eye she can see Peggy glancing over at her. "For what?"

She shrugs. "Was gonna try and make this a special day. Instead it's you and me babysitting."

"If I'm inferring what I think I'm inferring from 'special' I have to admit to being a tad disappointed." She goes back to watching the girl, who's now sorted out whatever piece she's been trying to play. It's heavy sounding. Like one that fella with the cannons or that guy with the big hands that died during the war. "But it's all because you've got a big heart Angie. And that's perfectly fine."

"Yeah."

Peggy nods. Digs through the lettuce til she finds the piece she wants and plops it into her mouth. Chewing it with that endearing gusto of her's. "It's what I love about you."

Angie's wooden spoon pauses. Oil spatters against it darkening the wood and some of the garlic moves past brown into black.

But Angie can't do anything about it. Nothing but stir and deglaze and act like her world wasn't just rocked so casually.

Peggy Carter's just said she's in love with her.

And that's the best and worst thing she could have possibly said.


	9. Chapter 9

Later that night, well after they get ready for bed and deftly avoid talking about casual declarations of love uttered at the kitchen counter, Angie startles awake.

Peggy's already up and tense as a boy in a boat on D-Day. She's even got her hand on the gun she's moved from the bedside table to the drawer in the bedside table.

She starts to ask what's got Peggy spooked and Angie awake, but then there's the noise.

A mewling or keening kind of noise that rattles Angie fiercely.

It takes her a minute to put together what she's hearing.

A teenage girl in the throes of a nightmare.

"I'm gonna check on her."

Peggy starts to protest. Starts to pull that pistol out of the drawer. But Angie stops her with a kiss and a hand on her thigh.

"I'll be right back," she insists. "Stop worrying."

The way Peggy's looking at her tells her Peggy's **not** gonna stop worrying, but she at least draws her hand out of the drawer without the gun.

"I'll come with you," she insists. But Angie reminds her that the girl watched her suspiciously all through dinner and hasn't quite cottoned to Peggy like she has to her.

"I'll be fine," she says again, and she's out of bed and shrugging on her robe before Peggy can make mountains out of mole hills.

She creeps into the room Natalie's using—the one Dottie was in before her—and the feeling she gets is that rage. The kind she felt when she saw the bruises the first time.

Cause here's this girl waking up and her hand's reaching for her other hand, which she's tied to the bedpost with her sock.

When she stops. When she looks at Angie. It's with a kind of shame Angie's never had the misfortune of coming across before. The kind that demands she crosses the room and takes the girl in her arms and tell her it's okay.

Natalie is so hard and still in her arms. A coiled up monster Peggy might be familiar with.

"It's okay," she says softly into the girl's red hair.

The girl says nothing.

Angie sits back on the bed and puts just a little space between them. Enough so the girl won't feel crowded.

"I heard you crying," she says before Natalie can ask why she's there.

Natalie winces. Flushes. Still looks ashamed. "You shouldn't have heard that."

"We all cry."

Natalie looks at her, those blue eyes trying to be very serious. "I don't."

She's a kid playing pretend. Putting on a face she thinks adults wear.

"I do."

She rolls her eyes. "You're an actress."

"Peggy does too. And trust me, she's not winning an Oscar any time soon."

Natalie looks down. Looks back up peeking out from behind a curtain of hair. "She does?"

"I've seen it with my own eyes."

That chips away a little of the crummy wall Natalie's tried to build and Angie uses the opportunity to sit next to her at the head of the bed and pull her back into a hug.

Natalie acts like she might resist it, but Angie's rubbing her back real soothing like and eventually the girl's head settles on her chest.

Angie speaks after a long silence. "You're mom's not in Milan is she?"

"No."

"Is he your dad?"

Natalie's voice is a whisper. "No."

"Your parents—"

"They died in the war."

"And you've been with him since?"

She feels Natalie nod, her chin bumping against Angie's chest.

"Okay."

"Okay?" Natalie looks up with confusion.

Angie just nods. Runs a hand through her hair like her own mom used to do when she was upset. "Okay."

They don't talk anymore after that. Even though Angie wants to learn every last thing she can. Even though she wants to take Peggy's gun and drive down the coast and put a bullet in a guy's head.

They just sit there, Natalie curled into her and Angie holding her. Until the girl's near asleep.

"Why are you so nice," Natalie finally asks, her voice soft with sleepy wonder.

Angie hushes her. "Go to sleep kid. We'll chat in the morning."

"You're not supposed to be so nice."

####

Angie sketches out the barest bones of the facts for Peggy the next morning while Natalie's still asleep. Peggy's not the least bit confused and, in fact, goes a little pink.

She's steamin' mad.

"I'll take care of it," she announces while Angie's stuck in her closet figuring out what to wear that day.

She peeks out and finds Peggy's bare back to her. She's stripped down to her underthings and is pulling slacks and a blouse out of her suitcase.

The firm line of her shoulders matching all that resolve in her voice has Angie wanting to fly over the bed and into her arms right then and there. Instead she just steps out of the closet. "You'll 'take care of it?'"

Peggy looks over her shoulder, sees Angie in her slip and bra, does a very good job of looking like she hasn't noticed. "I'll take care of it."

Angie crosses her arms. "How exactly are you gonna do that?"

"I…have my ways."

Angie raises an eyebrow.

Peggy sighs. "I won't kill him."

Angie stares.

"Or maim him. Fear of God only."

She's so honest saying that. Which is a feat for Peggy Carter, because the woman's whole life is a mix of half truths and whole lies.

Peggy turns back around and pulls on her pants. Which means she's surprised when Angie comes up and wraps her arms around her waist and presses her cheek to the space between Peggy's shoulder blades.

Surprised and rigid. Like Natalie the night before. Then she goes soft in Angie's arms. Leans into her body. Let's herself be squeezed by Angie's spindly arms.

Maybe she closes her eyes too. Maybe, like Angie, she finds something good and honest in the funny little embrace. Maybe, like Angie, she gets the urge to talk about love.

One of them sighs.

Angie can't be sure which. Can't focus on things like who starts what because Peggy's suddenly turned around and is holding her face in her hands and kissing her tenderly and ardently at once. Trying to convey all kinds of emotions she shouldn't. The kind of emotions Angie runs from like they're atom bombs.

Angie's hands find their way to Peggy's elbows and she holds on tight. Stuck there on her feet between wanting to run and wanting to hold onto everything Peggy's offering her.

It's really easy to hold on.

The thing is.

She knows they're doomed. It's just **math**. She's queer and Peggy's Peggy and they're starlets and spies and **married**. Whatever they want to be to each other isn't sustainable. It's finite like…oil. Or…helium.

One day the jig'll be up and Peggy will go back to her family and Angie will go back to playing pretend.

But for the moment Angie tries not to think about that. There's a big ol' doomsday clock hovering over their heads and she refuses to look at it.

Until Peggy's gently pushing her back til her legs brush the bed. Then she's parting with a gasp. Then she's leaning into Peggy and ducking her head so it's laying on Peggy's shoulder.

Peggy doesn't need to hear some reason for why they've stopped kissing. She lays her hand in Angie's hair and sighs.S he probably wouldn't want to hear reasons even if Angie could voice them. She's not big on dissecting feelings. That's one of those silly little things that Angie loves about her.

Shit.

She told herself no. Yet here she is. She's gone and fallen in love with Peggy Carter all over again.

####

Peggy's running errands she insists have nothing to do with tracking down the man Natalie's been living with so Angie is in the garage finally finishing up the XK120 project it's taken her too long to finish.

Natalie's sitting on a stool watching. "Couldn't you pay someone to do this," she asks.

"Sure," Angie grunts. She fiddling with a sticky bolt and ready to beat it with her wrench. "But where's the fun in paying some other guy to do it."

"Aren't you worried it could break?"

Angie has to roll out from under the car to glare at Natalie good and proper and severely. "My work doesn't break."

Natalie's confused.

She sighs, "I've been working on cars since before the war, kid. I practically bleed oil and gas."

"Remind me to keep you away from open flames."

It's a sharp response from a kid who's normally so shy and it pulls a barking kind of laugh out of Angie. In turn Natalie smiles and blushes.

"Is that your roundabout way of saying you'll cook tonight?"

The kid's stricken by the offer. "I don't…I can stay here tonight?"

Angie's original plan was for Natalie to stay until her mom came back. Now that she knows there's no actual mom the plan's a lot more nebulous. The one thing she's positive about is the kid's not going back to whoever she was with.

"You can stay as long as you want Natalie."

At least until the Captain America shoot is over. But that's three months off and Angie's hoping she'll have a better plan for Natalie by then. Maybe she could have Peggy look into finding extended family that isn't a…guy that needs Angie's wrench buried in his head.

The kid's face softens. Not quite to tears. Then she rushes over and drops to the ground and hugs Angie so tight she's afraid for her ribs. "Thank you," she whispers.

Angie's usually the one doing the hugging in her relationships so she's a little surprised by the contact, but after realizing she's just being surprised she drops her hand into Natalie's hair and kisses the top of her head.

####

Peggy will say, at the drop of a hat, that the thing about peace is how **temporary** it is. She'll point to the end of the war and how the Russians were more than happy to play at bad guys just a few months later. Or she'll allude to their own private Armistice Day all those years ago in a car and how it couldn't last.

The war's always raging somewhere according to Peggy.

Angie had chalked it up to spy paranoia and Peggy's general need to be constantly punching things (both physically and metaphorically). Angie's not as pessimistic as Peggy. Part of her, a pragmatic and boring part, might agree, but Angie has to believe that there's more than unending war.

Otherwise what the hell is the point?

And it's that optimism that some old French guy once hated enough to write a book on that bites her in the toosh.

It's only a couple of days later. Days spent teaching Natalie how to rebuild engines and make a mean marinara and walk around a film set like she's supposed to be there. And nights sharing a bed (very platonically) with Peggy. Watching her sleep and worrying about what they might come to mean to one another.

It's not so long that habits can form. Except that one where Peggy likes to kiss her good night and stop things before they get too heated.

But it's long enough that Angie gets comfortable.

Gets content.

It's long enough that when Peggy comes in the front door with her gun drawn and Natalie rises from her spot on the couch and only looks annoyed instead of shocked that Angie's gto the right to feel **gutted**.

"Angie step away," Peggy says. No nonsense. Hard and cold.

Angie doesn't go to Peggy like Peggy'd probably like, but she does step clear from Natalie. Which, when she thinks about it later, will feel like a pretty terrible thing to do. Here she told Natalie she'd keep her safe but as soon as Peggy's got a gun drawn she's ducking for cover.

Natalie looks

Natalie looks as gutted as Angie feels.

"I paid a visit to the man Natalie's been staying with," Peggy says, her gun so steady. She's always been better with the things than any of Angie's family. "He's been dead for days."

"No great loss to the world," Natalie insists.

"Neck snapped. Would take quite a bit of force. A girl like you could only do it if you were trained."

Natalie lifts her chin defiantly.

Angie feels like crying. Or maybe just covering her mouth to keep all her horror inside. But she doesn't do any of that. Just keeps staring.

"Perhaps in Russia?"

"If you're going to say it than say it Ms. Carter."

"You're Leviathan."

Angie's not privy to most of the spy stuff. She knows about HYDRA because **everyone** knows about HYDRA. Leviathan she's only heard of because Dottie thinks she's an idiot and talks about her old spy friends when she's in ear shot.

"Like Dottie," she says. She thinks of Natalie tying herself up at night and how that wasn't to earn Angie's pity but to protect them both from whatever beast the Soviets had built inside of her.

"Yelena Belova is half the agent I am," Natalie says and it's with the fierceness of an insulted child.

"Yet she maintained her cover," Peggy's moving around the room, gun still on Natalie. Comes to stand just beside of Angie. "Your nightmare that first night here. It was a mistake."

Natalie scowls.

Angie steps to the side so she's half hidden behind Peggy. "I don't think she did it on purpose."

Natalie's not watching Peggy anymore now. Those blue eyes of hers are as savage and stark as Dottie's and they're on Angie.

"Perhaps not. What was the plan Natalie? Kill Angie?"

"No." Natalie's insulted. And

She looks sorry. Sorry enough that Angie has to clutch at the back of Peggy's shirt to keep from crossing the room and telling this crazy assassin girl it's all okay.

Peggy clucks. Like she's got a good hand at poker. "Recruit her. Get in as deep as you can. That was the plan. Wasn't it?"

"It wasn't personal," she fires back.

"It never is in our line of work dear."


	10. Chapter 10

Peggy locks Natalie up in the first floor bathroom. "No window," she tells the girl as she frog marches her. "No bathroom breaks either."

"Can I get a glass of water?"

Peggy motions to the sink with the tip of her pistol. "There's the sink."

She shuts the door before Natalie can protest. Then wedges a chair under it. "That should hold her until I can get the Italy office to send someone out to retrieve her."

Angie's been standing there somewhere between shocked and absolutely gobsmacked for so long that she doesn't realize Peggy's actually looking at her expectantly. Like she wants her to say something.

When the gears start grinding again in her brain she says, "You're arresting her?"

Peggy looks pained.

"She's a kid."

Peggy sighs.

"She's a kid Peggy. She gets nightmares for Pete's sake!"

"I understand you're sympathetic Angie. I am too, but—"

"She's a kid!"

"She's a spy! She made a choice to come here and spy on us—on you. That doesn't change just because we feel sorry for her."

The thing is that Angie gets that.

Honest.

She understands that they can't just let a child soldier spy walk out the front door. She's not stupid.

Okay.

She's a little stupid.

Because she went and lulled herself into this big fantasy. She was happy to play house with Natalie and Peggy and turn a blind eye to every damn little—

"Angie." Peggy's put her gun away and is standing an arm's length away. All cypher-like like she hasn't been in ages. Til she cocks her head to one side, quietly asking—begging in a way only Peggy can—for Angie to let her in.

"I trusted her." Angie speaks so softly she half thinks she just thought it.

"I know."

"You didn't?"

"There are very few people I trust."

"Dottie—"

"Isn't one of them. Nor is my husband. Or my staff. Maybe the Commandoes. Howard." She purses her lips instead of saying who another person might be. Some things are hard to just come out and say.

Angie figures for a spy "I trust you" might just be the three little words that trump stupid kid stuff like "love."

"Pretty rotten way to live English. Never trusting like that." She glances at the door, "Rotten," she says louder. She's just gonna go ahead and assume that Natalie's got her ear to the door and is listening to everything they say.

She hopes, in only the way a naive idiot can, that Natalie sits in there and feels a little regret.

####

Peggy finds her later to tell her Natalie's been taken into custody. That she's out of her hair.

That she's gone.

But Angie's in the study staring at the nail polish she'd loaned Natalie. It's still sitting by the book Natalie had been reading earlier. Some Faulkner that Peggy had groaned at the sight of and then walked out mumbling about the lack of proper authors like Doyle or Burroughs.

Angie and Natalie had laughed and then Natalie had confessed she'd never read Faulkner. She'd absorbed it like a sponge.

Fast learner.

Angie should have known better.

"You really couldn't have," Peggy says. "The whole point is that we don't see them coming. She'd be piss poor at her job if you'd noticed."

That's supposed to make her feel better, and it's probably similar to what Peggy tells herself when she realizes she didn't pick up on it sooner.

But it doesn't help.

"How exactly do you get to be a child spy anyways? Who tries out for that gig?"

Peggy purses her lips, "They don't audition. They're taken. Either from orphanages or from parents not long for this world."

Indoctrinated. That's the word they're always using when talking about the "Red Threat." That's what Peggy's telling her Natalie is.

Some kid with no control.

"Did you start that young?"

She doesn't mean to have it come out as an accusation. Doesn't mean to make Peggy look as stricken as she does. She's a little flustered by her own words and has to go and sit on the couch and glare at the wall of books opposite her.

Peggy joins her and she's something she almost never is.

Delicate.

It's not a word she'd use for Peggy. Efficient. Sharp. Graceful. Yeah. Delicate? She's seen fellas in bar room brawls that deserve that descriptor more.

"I was raised by spies and when I joined I was impossibly young," Peggy says. She swallows. "Maybe too young." Her hand reaches out to clasp Angie's and she gets caught up in looking at the play of tendons beneath the skin "But **I** chose, Angie. And I don't think that girl's had a genuine choice in her life."

The way she says it has Angie looking back at her, "You're going to try and save her aren't you?"

Peggy doesn't speak immediately. She's instead looking down at her hand on Angie's. "I want to try."

####

Peggy, impossibly, stupidly, suggests she sleep in another room that night. Because she's trying, again, to be delicate.

When Angie looks at her like she's the dumbest dumb to ever cross her path Peggy at least has the good sense to blush.

Then she launches into a stuttering speech about how they were just sharing a bed to keep up appearances.

Angie thinks about reminding her that that was all for Dottie and that they both should have known Natalie was a spy when she didn't balk even once at the two of them going into the same bedroom every night. She even caught them **kissing** once.

At least evil Russian child spy training camps were training their children spy slaves to be open minded.

She's too exhausted (emotionally) to outline all the reasons why Peggy's suggestion is dumber than the box of rocks her brother used to keep under his bed. So instead she walks over to where Peggy is standing uneasily and puts both her hands on Peggy's cheeks and leans forward onto her toes and kisses her.

"For a super spy you're not too bright English," she whispers against parted lips.

"I was," Peggy presses her lips to Angie's again, "being polite."

Angie doesn't want to talk, or even think, about how good it is to kiss Peggy. How easy it feels.

How comfortable.

She's all knotted up over Natalie and all she needs it Peggy's arms around her and her warm breath on her skin and it's like the bad stuff all goes away.

She wonders what would happen if she pulled Peggy down onto the bed. Slipped inside of her and turned her head away from the troubles both past and brewing for the future.

She's so curious that she's got Peggy on the bed and she's straddling her and palming a breast she hasn't had proper access to in more than half a decade when Peggy pulls away with a harried gasp.

"Stop," she begs.

And Angie does want to stop.

She knows she ought to.

But instead she dropping down so her teeth can graze Peggy's neck and her fingers are plucking at a nipple hardening from her ministrations and

"Stop."

One of Peggy's hands covers Angie's offending one and the other cups her cheek and forces her to look at her.

At cheeks flushed and lips bruised and eyes dark from the low light and all of what they could be doing. Then Peggy's looking so damn sorry.

"You're upset," she's saying, "and you're trying to make yourself feel better."

"Is that so wrong?" Her voice cracks and the way Peggy looks at her tells her she's not the only one surprised by all that emotion.

Peggy leans up to kiss her. "No."

When she sinks back down into the mattress she drags Angie with her. Their foreheads touch and Peggy holds her there even though Angie's itching to be everywhere else.

They stay like that for a while. The rise and fall of Peggy's chest becomes a rhythm that's all too soothing and before Angie knows it she's

Asleep.

####

When she wakes up again it's with her as the little spoon to Peggy's big spoon. They're both still fully dressed and her bra is digging into all sorts of parts of her it shouldn't.

Peggy sighs when Angie slips away, and she must have been more tired than she thought because she's still asleep when Angie gets out of the shower.

She pulls another blanket over her thinking that Peggy will either wake up and be touched by the little gesture, or she'll get so warm under two blankets that she'll wake up sooner.

She almost kisses her on the cheek too, but catches herself just a few inches away. Pretty soon their playing house is gonna be over. The spy is caught. The whole reason Peggy followed her to Italy is moot now. She'll have to go back to her two kids and her husband and Angie will go back to the life she built and that's the way it's gonna have to be.

They've got no future and the sooner Angie lets that sink in the better.

She heads downstairs and starts thinking about her car in the garage. It's all done and her fingers are itching to get behind the wheel and take it for a spin. Open it up on some winding mountain roads.

It can be her last hurrah with Peggy.

She's already got the image of a wide eyed Peggy in the passenger seat and can feel the phantom touch of her fingers digging into her thigh as they pull tight around a curb.

Angie's still smiling at the idea when she saunters into the kitchen and finds Dottie Hayseed the super spy eating marmalade directly out of the jar with a spoon.

"You're back," she says sourly.

"Heard about your last house guest."

She's so damn smug. Angie fantasizes about violent things she wish she could do to her as she makes a quick breakfast.

"I expect you'll be out of my hair soon enough," she says casually.

Out the corner of her eye she can see Dottie raise an eyebrow. "Kicking me out?"

"The spy plot's done isn't it? Your old pals failed. No reason for you or Peggy to stick around."

"Me maybe." Now she's studying Angie. Like she's weighing all kinds of things to say. Then she leans forward, speaking in one of those conspiratorially girl talk voices, "You're really going to kick Peggy out?"

Angie pours her juice. "She's got a family. Not fair to her kids to keep her from them."

"She's got feelings for **you** though. She hasn't just been sleeping in the same bed as you to keep you safe."

"Feelings stopped mattering around the time she went and married a man don't you think?"

"Men can be taken care of."

Angie was cutting bread with a knife and she sets it down with a clatter. "Why do you suddenly give a hoot Dottie? I figure the only person rooting against us more is that husband of her's back in DC."

"Oh I can't stand you," she says brightly, "you're a naive child dragging Peggy down. If it were up to me I'd be sticking a knife in your throat as we speak. But Peggy **cares**," something awful drips off the word as Dottie says it.

"Aren't you romantic. As long as she's happy you're happy?"

Dottie tilts her head, "Knife in the back might work just as well."

####

"Knife in the back might work just as well."

Angie thought it was a joke. One of those cruel and savage ones she just assumed spies played. She never mentioned it to Peggy because, frankly, she was embarrassed by all the barbs traded back and forth with Dottie.

It always felt so **petty**.

That is until Peggy twists around in her car seat to look out the back window. "We are, without a doubt, being followed."

They're coming back from a short day on set. Just four days after Natalie was arrested. Peggy insisted on coming with her still so Angie insisted on taking her (finally finished) Jaguar XK120. It's silver and stunning and Tony Curtis asked if he could take it for a spin and she'd laughed in his face.

Angie's wearing a scarf and sunglasses to protect her on the drive and Peggy's braided her hair back to keep the fly aways at bay but now she looks like one of those WAC girls.

When she realizes the car's following them and says as much she reaches for the gun in her purse and Angie tries not to feel alarmed.

"Can you speed up," Peggy says, never taking her eyes off the car trailing them.

When Angie, incredibly offended, doesn't answer Peggy sighs. "Right." She looks back at Angie with a big fake smile, "Could you be a dear and out run our tail?"

That's more like it. Angie glances in the rearview. "Could always wreck him instead."

"Let's play it safe. Famous actresses launching spies off into Lake Como might not play well to the news."

The guy chasing them is in a sleek Aston Martin. Probably weighs less than the Angie's Jaguar, but she's betting it hasn't been modified like her car.

The Aston Martin maybe fast, but Angie's tweaked her car like one of those one's that wins trophies. And, naturally, she's the better driver.

That's clear on every turn she takes, her wide tires gripping the pavement, her feet smooth on the clutch and gas. She whips around them while their tail, probably a one foot driver, has to break on the turns.

It slows him down and Angie turns to grin at Peggy. "How good am I—"

There's a pop and the glass of the windshield blooms with tiny fractures all coming out of a bullet sized hole.

She glances again and can see the arm with a gun sticking out the window.

"English I think he's planning on doing more than following us."

"Quite right."

"Why's he want to kill us?"

"If I had to guess I'd say he wants to kill you."

She twists the wheel when she hears his gun go off again.

"Me?! Because of Natalie?"

"If I knew why he wanted you dead don't you think I would have done more to stop it?" Peggy twists around in her seat and shoots back.

It's a pop pop pop in Angie's ear. The kind that makes her cringe and makes her palms all wet.

Puts her back in a cramped feeling Ford V8 that smells like gunpowder and her brother's blood.

"But why now?"

"Famous movie stars can't just be murdered in their homes Angie," Peggy's holding herself steady and aiming like one of those Russian lady snipers. "And your well known for you love of cars. A simple accident—"

"Not a lot of accidents involving high speed chases and guns!"

Peggy grunts.

Angie shifts the car back down as she takes another turn. More glass splinters and Peggy falls back into her seat.

"The car's armored." And Peggy sounds dejected. She ejects the clip out of her gun and reaches down onto the floorboard where her purse is.

"Damn," she utters and Angie can **hear** the frown.

She glances over and— "Peggy!"

There's a splash of red streaking down Peggy's neck and under her blouse and dripping off her hand.

She calls Peggy's name again but Peggy's looking confused and— Angie reaches out and presses her hand to the jagged tear across Peggy's neck.

"Hold on," she says and she's right back in that other car and her brother's screaming in pain and her cousins are panicking and the cops' bullets are digging up divots in the road in front of them.

"Please Peggy."

Angie's a good driver.

She been chased down by more cars that most can count and she always, **always**, gets away.

But this time she's got one hand off the steering wheel and pressed to Peggy's neck and the other's slippery with sweat and she's in a tricked out sports car and the guy chasing her's in a car rebuilt like a God damned **tank**.

The odds that she used to be so good at tweaking to her favor are decidedly against her. So when he catches up with her on a descent and smashes the front end of his tank into the back end of her racer she goes into a skid she never planned to be in in this car.

Doesn't matter how wide her tires are when they lock up and lose traction. The whole car slides off the road and down into gravel and brush and trees.

It doesn't flip. It's got a low center of gravity and she manages to direct it just enough during the slide that the front end catches and crunches against the boulder instead of the side that would have flipped them.

But it **hurts**. The whole world rattles and scratches at her and then clangs to a stop that sends her heart, stomach and the rest of her insides right into her mouth.

They're caught up on another tree and not even a foot from a sheer drop overlooking the lake.

If she had a mind she'd probably be able to see her fancy villa there on the shore.

Peggy's moaning beside her. Saying "ooo" and trying to open her eyes. Up on the road she can hear the squeak of brakes as the other car comes to a stop.

Her's ankle's throbbing and she looks down and sobs.

They gotta go. They gotta get away. She tries to turn the car's engine over but it's tick tick ticking and hissing like the radiator and engine block are both cracked.

She beats the steering wheel.

Stops.

Getting mad's not gonna keep anyone alive.

"Peggy," she says low and dangerous like the spies that've been living in her home, "you gotta go."

Peggy doesn't move. She's breathing. She's **alive**. But she doesn't move.

She reaches over Peggy to unlocked her door and then all that air and water and rocks are right there under them. There's just enough space between the car and the edge of the cliff for them to scootch but Peggy's

Not

Waking

Up.

She screams her name and slaps Peggy so hard the palm of her hand stings. Peggy's dark eyes open. They're foggy. She's all befuddled.

"I need you to go Peggy."

"What—"

She grabs her by the chin and jerks her around to look at her. "Peggy, you've got to go."

Peggy tries to look at her. Tries to figure out what's happening. But she must not get it because she looks at Angie's watering eyes and says, "Come with me."

Angie cracks, "I can't."

She can hear the killer coming closer. Feet heavy on the gravel.

"Angie what—"

Peggy's not gonna go without a Goddamned thesis outlining events so Angie figures she's gotta do what's right. Thinks back to that time that still makes her madder than a nest of hornets. When Peggy drugged her drink to keep her safe.

"It's the only way," she says and she wishes on everything wishable that she wasn't getting a front row seat to understanding why Peggy up and left her then.

She snaps the belt keeping Peggy in place open and shoves her hard. Hard enough that between the push and gravity Peggy goes sliding right out of the seat and over the cliff. The look she gives Angie as she goes on a fall Angie knows—**knows**—has gotta be survivable is one of those looks that's gonna sit with Angie every last day of whatever life she might have had.

If she gets to sleep—she gets to dream—it's gonna be there. Haunting her. Replacing her brother's screams or the sight of her cousin flattened by a truck.

Peggy's fall is quiet. So quiet that when she's out of sight Angie's left with just the sound of a rapidly cooling engine and birds landed back in the tree the car's hanging onto and that silly waltz sounding song about crying hearts sputtering out of the speakers in fits and stops.

And the crunch of little stones under foot as the man comes closer.

Angie's shivering and wishing she wasn't.

She pulls at her throbbing ankle again, just to try, but it doesn't budge. It's trapped between metal bits of her crunched up front end.

And he's tall. Got a scarf or mask or something on that covers the bottom part of his face. Hair's a little long. Stringy. Eyes are bright and they're dead like Dottie's.

Maybe deader.

He walks towards her like he's made of metal and stone. All cold and lacking life inside. And one arm **is** metal. From shoulder to fingertips. But the other is holding a gun and shivering as bad as Angie is.

She doesn't want to die.

"Please."

His eyes are wet like something's in 'em. Like life is trying to find a way.

So she begs again. Her teeth chatter. "I don't want to die."

There's conflict in him that Angie can see clear as day.

Maybe. Maybe she can beg her life. Maybe she can—

God she doesn't want to die.

Then he's rigid and all the life's gone out like a lit wick in a breeze.

And the gun's coming up and the barrel's dark

And

Angie doesn't want to die.


	11. Chapter 11

"You're the most tenacious son of a bitch I've ever met Carter."

"Thank you sir."

"The way you are now? Could like to live forever."

"Possibly, sir."

"Not many folks could get shot, hanged and beaten with a baseball bat in the span of the day and then sit here grinning at me."

"I'd prefer it if I'd kept all my teeth."

Phillips grins and tilts her face so he can look at the big gap where one of her front teeth used to be. "It's not a whole body Carter! Medical can make you up a new one faster than you can peel all the potatoes in mess." Then he leans forward with twinkling eyes that catch the sun and make her want to look away. Only she can't. "But first you got to wake the hell up."

Water drips into her ear canals. Tickles.

Dum Dum is behind him and grinning. "You're not done yet Miss Union Jack."

The problem with being violently knocked unconscious is that the brain is confused when it comes back to itself. There's no way around it. No way to avoid it. The best and brightest are effected as easily as the dimmest and slowest. Neurotypical and a-typical alike suffer.

Everyone of ever color and creed, Super Soldier Serum or no, will get things confused. Such as dreams and reality.

Or the past and the present.

The water's still ticking her ears and she slaps at it. Rights herself so she's treading water.

Her eyes aren't quite ready to open yet so she has to deal with just the sun beating against closed eyelids, but she's starting to sort out the past, Phillips chastising her after her first major mission post…everything, and the present.

She's in a body of water.

And everything hurts.

"Come on girl," she hears him say.

Phillips is the only person alive or dead who could call her "girl" and not get punched for the trouble. From him it's always been affectionate.

There are acute pains beyond the throbbing mess that is her entire nervous system. One part of her neck feels like it's been slashed with a machete and her right knee feels like someone tried to kick it in with their heel.

Rocks are hitting water. A few at first. Than a whole glut of them.

Brackish water splashes into her mouth and she sputters and spits. Thrashes a moment before finally—thankfully—opening her eyes.

There's a car careening down the face of a cliff overhead.

And she's in a bloody lake.

She moves backwards with powerful strokes, just barely avoiding the whirlpool briefly formed when the car violently hits the water and begins to sink.

She watches the bright swirl of bubbles that breaks the surface. Thinks of other crashes into bodies of water. Maybe Steve didn't even feel it when he hit. The radio died so quickly. Just in mid-sentence. Maybe Steve was just as luck-

Angie.

She was in the car.

She was in that car.

They were driving and then they were attacked and Peggy fired back and then she was dazed and getting kicked off a cliff by a woman she'd spent the better part of a month and a half trying to woo and-

She sucks in a deep breath and dives.

She has to swim one handed, her neck is still weeping blood and she keeps the other hand over it, pressed into the tear. She kicks hard with her legs, ignoring the pain in her knee.

She has to get to Angie. Has to get her out. Has to save her life.

She's not gonna lose someone again.

Not like this.

This close to shore the water isn't too deep. It's all fallen rocks from the cliff face above, and the car is settled on its side. She can see the driver's hair, a golden brown, weightless in the water.

Her lungs start to burn nearly as bad as her leg and neck, but she makes it the last two meters to the car and grabs hold to anchor herself.

This deep down beams of sunlight barely warms the water and Peggy is as cold as her time in Russia in '43.

But not as cold as the woman who's held in the car by nothing more than a seatbelt.

She's dead. Her skin is dull like chalk and her open eyes are already fogged over.

Peggy ducks her head and wishes she could take a breath.

It isn't Angie. She's dressed like her and her hair, before it hit the water, may have even been styled like Angie's. It's even her shade of lipstick.

But she **isn't** Angie.

Peggy uses her grip on the car to push herself back up to the surface where she takes big gasps of air.

A woman's dead at the bottom of the lake and the woman that should be there is gone.

The fog's all gone. The confusion's cleared away.

There's only one right conclusion now.

Water spills into her mouth and she spits it out as she treads water.

Angie's been abducted and her death has been faked.

With no survivors it would have taken days for them to find the car and the body, and by then the woman down below would be so decomposed as to be unrecognizable.

People would mourn Oscar-winning actress Angela Carter and move on with their lives. If SHIELD investigated they'd likely assume Peggy was knocked free when the car hit the water. If the assassin's plot had gone according to plan they would have found her body floating towards shore and any evidence of being shot devoured by the lake's flora and fauna.

It's a clever story someone's built just to cover an abduction.

And Peggy plans to tear it all down to the ground.

####

When Peggy squelches in the front door of Angie's villa Yelena has the good graces to be surprised.

"Peggy?" She stands and comes closer, hands held warily in front of her. "Wh—what happened?"

"I need a patch up and then you and I get to go to war Yelena."

If she wasn't already so cold from being soaked to the bone and leaking blood across half the coast of Lake Como Peggy would be freezing from that horrifyingly excited grin Yelena "rewards" her with.

"We get to kill someone?"

She limps to the couch and flops down onto it, an Angie in her head wincing at what her wet clothes are doing to the upholstery. "More than one someone if you're lucky."

Yelena claps and dashes off to fetch needle, thread and iodine.

She does not ask about Angie.

Not until she's sitting very, very close and carefully stitching up the tear on Peggy's neck.

"I'm surprised this started to seal up so quickly," she says, "you heal awfully fast."

"Always have." It's only a partial truth.

Yelena hums. "Is that why 3C isn't around? Got scared of what you can do?"

"She was taken."

The needle piecing her flesh together stalls. "Taken?"

"They thought they killed me, and then they faked her death and took her."

Yelena is very good at what she does. If she harbors any secrets they're hidden behind those cold, cold eyes. "Peggy, I'm so sorry."

It's a real enough condolence, but Peggy still finds herself studying Yelena warily as she patches her back together. Watching the muscle in her cheek twitch and the way she modulates her breathing when she sits so close.

She's very good at what she does.

Yelena bites her lip. Speaks softly. "You want to get her back." It isn't a question.

"I do."

"Do you know," her bright eyes flicker up to Peggy's, "do you know who it was?"

Peggy grimaces. "You think it might be Leviathan."

She hedges, "You took one of their's…"

"Angie isn't one of our's."

"Maybe before you moved into her bedroom. Now she's fair game, Peggy."

And unlike Daniel Angie's ill-equipped for spycraft.

No. Not ill-equipped.

Untrained.

Angie had once begged her—**begged** her—to train her and she'd refused. She'd run away.

What on earth did she think was going to happen if she tried to come back? Why did she have to go and forget her own very good reasons? What was the point? All because…because Angie was there on the television and Peggy was lonely and bored and missing—

"Hey," Yelena has stopped sewing and cups her cheek. Her hands are cool and soothing. "If you want her back, we'll get her back."

"You'll help?" Peggy's…surprised.

Dottie smiles and her hand drops to Peggy's knee, her fingers cold on the hot swollen joint. "Us Griffin girls have to stick together Peg."

It's the friendliness that raises her hackles. She doesn't let it show. She feigns exhaustion (it isn't difficult) and tilts her head away.

Yelena's so earnest in her desire to help. Peggy just wishes she could believe her.

####

Kicking down a reinforced door is not easy. Shattering wood and breaking locks with nothing but one's foot requires concentrated force and super muscle control.

Doing it with a mucked up knee is even more difficult. In addition to the application of force and use of control it also requires a chair, grit, and no small amount of pain relievers.

But when the door rattles open and the two men inside the room surge forward that chair comes in tremendously handy. It shatters against the cheek of one of the men, and the piece that remains intact in Peggy's hand is good to block two wide swings from the other before she cracks it against his temple and watches him collapse like those sacks of potatoes Phillips always insisted she peel when she disobeyed orders.

Technically…**technically** the men unconscious on the ground are her employees. They're employees of SHIELD's Italian office and are loyal to SHIELD and everything it stands for.

Unfortunately if they were trained correctly they should be loyal enough to ignore direct orders from the Director of SHIELD if those orders involve her selfishly demanding the release of a child spy so she can use her to retrieve her girlfriend.

If Howard or Phillips knew about the mission there would be quite a lot of frowning. Maybe a suspense

But in Peggy's defense the unconscious men were punching a child.

A child who is nonplussed by a masked woman with a limp storming into the interrogation room with half a chair and a drawn gun.

The girl spits a glob of phlegm and blood onto the tile. "Took you long enough," she drawls.

"I'm not one of yours," Peggy fires back. She trains the gun on the girl. It's a rotten thing to do to a child and if bits of her conscience weren't dead somewhere in the Atlantic or abducted by spies they'd be telling her as much.

Natalie goes paler than she normally is. Swallows. Her nostrils are rimmed with red and a streak of blood's dried on her chin.

Peggy will be having a conversation with the Italian office if she survives all this.

As spies go, the girl opposite her is very, very good. Given time she'll outclass all the rest of them. Right now she is still a child though. And when she realizes she might be shot by a stranger while still tied to a chair she's scared.

Then she tugs on her bindings and cocks her head. "Do it," she challenges.

Peggy sighs. "A tip Natalie, when someone has a gun pointed at your head don't challenge them to shoot. Not unless you're ready to die."

She's still naively defiant, "I am."

Peggy holsters her gun and whips off her mask, "You aren't, so let's neither of us pretend you are."

That gets a more reasonable reaction. Confusion. "Peggy?"

"Angie's been taken."

Natalie's surprised. Not expectant. Which is a shame. Peggy was hoping it was her people doing the abduction. "By who," she asks.

Peggy limps over. She'll need to tape her knee again once they're outside. "I don't know, but I need your help to find her."

"Isn't that why you have you agency?"

She draws a knife from her kit and slips it under the ropes holding the girl in place. "They're spies and soldiers. Good ones, but," she gives a tug and the ropes are cut away, "you're something more aren't you Natalie?"

Natalie won't admit it, but one side of her mouth quirks up.

"And if for whatever reason I can't," Peggy has to swallow. Has to not think about shoulds and coulds. That's not how leaders lead. It's how they fail. She hands the knife over so the girl can cut away the rest of her bonds. "If something happens I need someone capable. Someone smart. Someone to avenge her."


	12. Chapter 12

She cracks her gum.

In the car.

In the plane.

In the hotel.

In the boat.

Between punches.

The bloody girl cracks her gum.

It's an irritating constant Peggy's manages to suffer through only because it irritates Yelena even more, and **someone** has to make sure she doesn't throttle a gum cracking child.

"This would not stand in the Red Room," Yelena growls one morning as all three stalk out of a, currently in flames, HYDRA safe house.

Natalie cracks the gum, strawberry from the smell, obnoxiously loud, "Good thing we're not in Mother Russia."

"For a variety of reasons," Peggy mutters.

Yelena starts towards Natalie, slowly putting the chain whip she's been cracking HYDRA heads with into a spin. Peggy has to step between them to avoid another fight.

While HYDRA hasn't even scratched Yelena and Natalie they've broken each other's noses, cracked one of Natalie's ribs and given Yelena a gash at the hairline that Natalie keeps calling her aborted face lift.

What should have been a rampage across Eastern Europe to save the woman Peggy loves has devolved into Peggy Carter: Assassin Cat Herder.

The only saving grace of the team up is the genuine contempt Yelena and Natalie have for one another. It's not bickering to hide affection. They really would murder each other if it weren't for their desire to help their respective friends.

Peggy limps to the truck. Her leg's still bothering her, but plenty of painkillers and keeping it taped has helped. Her neck, meanwhile, is healing faster than it should. While the assassins bicker Peggy examines the healing wound in the rearview mirror. She pokes and prods the healing flesh.

Then she snips off the knot Yelena carefully made and begins plucking the stitches from her skin.

That's how Natalie finds her, and she doesn't bother to hide her mixture of disgust and awe. "You could have asked for help," she says.

Peggy grunts and pulls the last bit of thread out. "Didn't think you two would hear me over the bickering."

Natalie shrugs. Leans forward to hug the empty seat in front of her, "You know she probably gave Angie up right? She's in love with you and thought it'd be easy to clear the way."

At night, sleeping under the stars or wrapped up in a scratchy blanket in a derelict old home still gutted by the war, she thinks about that.

How she pulled Angie into her world. Set her up like a bleeding rube. How Yelena bristled in her presence like a cat when another's invaded it's territory.

How it's all her fault.

Natalie cracks her gum. "It's your fault," she says. "Angie's too nice for the company you keep."

Peggy grimaces. "I'm well aware."

Outside Yelena has produced a Springfield from the back of the truck and is taking aiming down the sights, focusing on a single HYDRA soldier running for the woods.

The gun goes off with a crack.

"You get the feeling she likes it," Natalie observes.

She's trying to set her apart from Yelena, but Peggy's seen the grim satisfaction on the girl's face as she suffocates a man with her legs or brings him down with a swift jab to the jugular.

It's the same feeling she gets when bones splinter against her knee or knuckles.

"We all do."

"Angie doesn't."

Peggy sighs.

Natalie's second favorite hobby, after sending Yelena into flights of rage over gum, is needling Peggy about her guilt. The girl is as accomplished at playing people as she is at playing the piano. It's probably why she was sent out all alone so young.

"What do you plan to do when we get her back?"

Peggy raises an eyebrow, "You're optimistic."

Natalie shrugs and tries to act like none of it matters, "I like her."

Yelena is coming back towards them through the field, dragging the body behind her by its foot.

Peggy skewers Natalie with a glare via the rearview mirror. "Some advice from an old spy to a young one."

Natalie lazily blows a bubble. It pops and she catches all the gum back in her mouth.

"Plan for the present, and never dare hope for the future. It's safer that way."

Natalie looks straight ahead.

And crack goes her gum.

####

They're in a beachside bar just outside of Tarifa. It's not a popular resort location. The winds are too strong for water sports and the beaches are nothing extraordinary.

The draw is the easy ferry ride to Morocco.

They were there for three days before returning to Europe.

It's been five weeks since Angie was taken. Peggy's all healed and Natalie and Yelena have forged some kind of peace and it's been five. Bloody. Weeks.

She leaves them at the bar to use the payphone.

The connection back to DC is wretched and not for the first time Peggy wishes she'd thought to bring more SHIELD equipment on their "tour."

She didn't. Assaulting the Italian office and slaughtering HYDRA across six nations and two continents is not appropriate behavior for the Director of SHIELD.

Technically she's on vacation.

She's sure Phillips is less that pleased.

But Howard, when he answers the phone, is **relieved**. "Thank Christ," he sighs, "Where the hell have you been?"

She clears her throat. "Waylaid."

"Peggy things are going nuts and you're not answering. You have any idea how crazy that makes me? We got trouble in Italy and someone's spent the last month and change going after the other guy with a sledgehammer made out of Ruski dames."

"This may be the time to tell you this line is, uh, not secure."

Static drones in Peggy's ear.

Enough to make her think she's been disconnected.

Until, "What did you do?"

She breathes low and slow and her head thumps against the phone. "They took her."

More silence.

"Is she-"

"No. No, at least I don't think so."

She hears something that sounds like leather creaking. Howard must be sitting down. Which means he's focused. Which means he's concerned.

Which is never a good thing.

"Why didn't you-with everything we got why'd you disappear?"

She's been accused, by more than one person, of taking on burdens out of a sense of guilt and loyalty. It's a habit she's never bothered to break.

Instead of saying that-instead of being **honest**-Peggy does something cowardly instead. "You're one to talk."

"That was different."

She sighs. "I know." She glances back into the bar. The assassins are getting restless and they'll need to leave soon. "Look I was just calling to let you know I'm alive and I'm, relatively, safe."

"Not to ask for help?"

"You know you can't give it. She's…" Peggy has to be careful with what she says. While it's likely no one is listening it's still an unsecured line. She may have gone rogue but she's not going to go and commit treason too. "This is on me Howard. I have to be the one to sort it."

"If you need anything-"

"I know," she says softly.

"A plane."

She laughs at the suggestion. Only it comes out as warily as a sigh. "Howard…"

"Look, you're gonna get the girl okay? And then what? Fly **commercial**? No sir. You two are gonna fly back here first class."

She laughs again and this time she wants to cringe because she sounds **hopeful**.

"And then I'm going to let you take us all out for steak and whiskey."

"Oh how magnanimous," she says, and she's grateful when Howard doesn't mention the emotion coloring her voice.

"Bring her home," Howard says softly instead.

This time.

This time Peggy's gonna bring them home.

####

They're in southeast Yugoslavia again and they've just spoken with a very reliable old man who insists—**insists**—that HYDRA still exists and they're not the series of splinter cells every other outpost has claimed thus far.

He's unshaven and a little mad and Peggy thinks that maybe he's been sampling his own wares when he's not using them on the Slovenes they've found half dead in his facility.

Natalie is ushering those same people out and actually patting some of them on the back.

Whatever Mother Russia has done to the girl it hasn't bred all the empathy out of her.

Yelena, on the other hand, is a cold statue lurking over the man. Her German is harsher than Peggy's. More guttural. She demands to know where other facilities are. Slaps him. Not enough to bleed or even hurt.

More to shock.

So Peggy doesn't move. Just stares cooly.

That's when he tells them of a ship. A place where their most precious work is carried out. Far from prying eyes. Hidden. Remote. In the Baltic Sea.

Peggy hisses and Yelena's eyes widen.

The Baltic Sea is not an easy place to get to currently, let alone recon for an assault. It's a major battleground in the ideological war waged by the benefactors of both SHIELD and Leviathan. They can't just secure a boat and set sail. Every port is watched. Every beach monitored. Every—

Before Peggy can let herself feel disheartened the man kindly distracts her by charging her with a pitiful war cry.

It's a terrible ploy on his part. He's old and strung out and she's in a prime. More importantly Yelena is there with her eager trigger finger. She shoots him before he can make it a foot.

Peggy wants to chastise her. That's the **right** thing to do. But really all she can think about is how it's saved her the trouble of calling SHIELD.

"He could have had more information," she says softly.

Yelena is unmoved, "He didn't."

"You're so sure?"

There it is. That little twitch. Almost imperceptible. The kind of thing her keepers spent years trying to train out of her but likely gave up on. "What's the point," they thought, "she'll never be anywhere long enough for them to catch on."

They must not have planned on her committing to a month plus long tour of every HYDRA base in Europe and North Africa.

Natalie returns, hand lazily resting on her rifle, and gum still cracking. "Civilians are clear. So where we headed after we blow this place up."

Peggy closes her eyes when she realizes what her best, if most ill-advised option is. When she opens them again Yelena and Natalie are both tilting their heads and looking at her curiously.

"Back to the beach," she says, "I'm afraid we'll need a friend's help."

####

Sometimes, when Howard is being especially trying, Peggy likes to think of how he was really just training wheels for her every interaction with Namor, the Sub-Mariner. Because while Howard can be an obscenely cocky twit when he so desires, he has nothing on the King is f Atlantis.

Who is currently standing before her, his glistening chest swelling with pride.

"I was so happy to hear from you," he coos. "I knew you would see the error of your ways."

"Error," Natalie asks.

"He wants me to leave my husband." Natalie opens her mouth, no doubt to point out that Peggy effectively has. "For him."

Natalie's mouth snaps shut.

"I am just pleased as punch to meet you," Yelena claims.

Peggy's noticed that Yelena is very fond of taking on her Dottie persona when she's speaking with strange men. It's only mildly less disturbing in English than Portuguese or Russian.

Namor glances at Yelena and then, presumably, deems her unworthy of his attention because he turns back to Peggy. "Have you left him?"

"No, and Daniel's not why I'm here."

Namor snorts.

Peggy rolls her eyes. "And would you kindly keep your derision to yourself? In case you haven't noticed I'm exhausted, and clearly at my rope's end. Otherwise I wouldn't be dragging you out of the bog you call home."

Namor scowls, "I can only presume you're being this disagreeable because your experiencing your womanly trouble or Steve Rogers has crashed himself into another frozen tundra."

If Namor weren't the strongest man Peggy had ever met and she weren't in dire need of his help to save the woman she loves Peggy would have kicked him so hard in his little green underpants that his baritone would have become a soprano.

"A friend has been taken," she speaks clearly, "by HYDRA."

He pretends to ponder it, "I do despise HYDRA."

"If I remember correctly it and fire are the only things you can't stand."

"And your husband."

"A given," she says through clenched teeth.

He ticks them off with long fingers, "Also Rogers. Stark. That man with the bowler—"

"You've made your point Namor. Now will you help?"

"I owe no allegiance or favors to those who walk on land—"

"I know that."

"Even if it is for one for whom I harbor affection."

Namor and his people are, above all else, **proud**. Peggy knows that too. Knows she can't meet the Atlantean king on a beach and just beg for help.

She has to offer something.

"Antartica," she spits out.

One of his perfectly manicured eyebrows arches. "It is Atlantean territory," he says imperiously.

"I know that and you know that. But the rest of the world isn't even sure if you exists. What if I could continue to ensure that mystery **and** preserve your claims to the continent?"

"How?"

"It'll take time—"

He steps closer. Water's still dripping down a torso that even Renaissance sculptors would be hard-pressed to reproduce. "How?"

"A treaty."

"You would give me a continent for one friend?"

What surprises Peggy, later when she revisits the conversation in her head, is that she doesn't even have to consider it.

It's just a simple and sure

"Yes."


	13. Chapter 13

They're riding a turtle.

The two Russian assassins have been trained since childhood in the matters of murder and are capable and of doing thing with their bodies usually reserved for radio serials, but even they are shocked into silence by the giant turtle waiting for them at the shore.

It appears to be much more alarming then the large blue-skinned woman atop its shell.

Peggy, having ridden on one once with a super soldier and a man who can fly, is less shocked.

The fact is Atlantean turtles are some of the swiftest creatures in existence and they'll get them to their destination faster that any boat or plane. They're, more than anything else, a necessity in this rescue.

It's just...they're giant turtles who respond the the clicks, clucks and whistles of the Atlantean language. They're patently **ridiculous**.

Being filthy surface dwellers Namor and his people view Peggy and her Russian "comrades" with disgust as they step "aboard." The heavy wetsuits and breathing apparatus they each have to wear to survive underwater doesn't help.

Namor calls her "soft."

She ignores him.

He's not actually teasing Peggy. He genuinely thinks she's soft.

Just like he genuinely dislikes every man that's ever breathed the same air as her. And just as he genuinely believes he's better than all the rest of humanity combined.

His honesty, after so long wit the two oblique spies, is refreshing.

But not as refreshing as Angie's.

She misses her in this wretchedly romantic way. Here she works so hard to be this extraordinary soldier and spy master, but she still pines for loves she lost like Greta Garbo on the prow of a bloody boat.

The turtle navigates underwater currents most of the surface world can't even understand as easily as Peggy normally navigates the streets of D.C. They wind their way through canyons made of coral and over sand dunes larger than any in North Africa. They soar over the backs of whales as long as building and through clouds of fish that shimmer like shattered glass.

Traveling this way is…breathtaking. Enough to almost make her forget their mission. And the plans that have been made.

Namor's scouts have already located the ship and trail it silently. They won't join in the assault though. Namor has informed her that he's the only Atlantean she'll get. "I will not risk my people for the mere promise of Antartica," he'd said.

And she hadn't, and still doesn't, blame him.

No sane person should risk their life on a promise.

####

The vessel the turtle sneaks up on is much, much larger and more well kept that Peggy would have assumed. It makes her think that HYDRA has managed to stay better funded that SHIELD had previously thought. It makes her think it's more alive than any of them hoped.

It makes her livid.

The Atlantean woman tugs on the reigns as they surface and Peggy spits out her rebreather's mouth piece. Salty as the air is it's significantly sweeter than the canned stuff she's been breathing for the last few hours.

Yelena and Natalie are opening up a water proof duffle bag and pulling out weapons and gadgets. Yelena wordlessly hands Peggy a pistol that she shoves into the webbing around her waist.

"Namor I need you to keep them busy on deck, Yelena get to the engine room and shut her down, Natalie—"

"Take out the bridge, I know." Natalie slams a magazine into the bottom of her pistol and loads a bullet in the chamber.

"What are you going to be doing," Yelena asks as she draws a grapple hook out of the bag and starts swinging it around.

She is very good at not looking at Yelena incredulously, "I'll be searching for Angie."

"That's the name of your friend," Namor asks. He watches the hook sail over the railing. "It's a terrible name."

"Says **Namor**," Peggy growls.

He shrugs, "I speak only truths." Then the little wings on his feet launch him upwards and he's shooting into the air like a rocket with all of them watching after in awe.

"He can fly," Natalie asks.

"It's not that impressive," Yelena grumbles. She snatches hold of the rope and starts to climb. "He flies around in his underpants. How's that impressive?"

Above them there's shouts and then the pop of bullets in the air and Namor starts doing what he does best.

Creating chaos.

####

She leaves all the breathing equipment on deck in a pile with Yelena's and Natalie's and she pulls the hood that's been over her hair down so she can hear better.

The wetsuit, like most of the high-tech equipment Peggy uses, is Stark-designed. It's quiet as a whisper as she moves and keeps her almost uncomfortably warm.

In a twirl of gymnastics Yelena and Natalie both disappear off the top deck to accomplish their own missions. That leaves Peggy all alone to stalk the halls and find Angie.

She might not actually be on the ship. She might be squirreled away in some other site. She might be dead.

Peggy's fingers tighten around the grip of her pistol.

Angie can't be dead.

She punches her way down three decks and elbows enough information out of the men she encounters that she's led, eventually to a lab deep in the bowels of the ship.

The sounds of Namor's assault are muted this deep down.

There are scans of human bodies all over the room. Wicked looking instruments cover too many of the surfaces. A large chair with sharp looking metal restraints sits under a bright light. Drops of blood are splattered on the floor.

And there's a man.

Just one man.

Stricken by Peggy's arrival.

He turns to run and Peggy's reflexes stop him. She just aims her gun and fires. No thought. No consideration. A mere pull of the trigger.

The bullet wings his calf. It won't kill him. If he gets medical attention he will certainly survive. But it does send him falling to the floor with a cry and as he weakly tries to crawl away Peggy approaches. Fires again just past his outstretched hand.

"We're going to have a conversation," she says, "then you can crawl to your heart's content." She settles one leg on either side of him and squats down.

"Please," he whimpers.

Peggy thinks about how Angie might have pled. Thinks of her sitting in that chair. And her cries are somehow Steve's which clawed at Peggy all those years ago.

But Steve chose.

The barrel of her gun is hot and the man mewls as she presses it to his cheek.

"Where is the test subject?"

His eyes are foggy with confusion, "Which one?"

Her third bullet gouges the deck right next to his ear. It will give him tinnitus. There might even be permanent damage.

But without words it explains something very crucial to him. Peggy is no longer asking questions. She's expecting answers.

"The Soldier was being taken to the fridge for preservation," he says shakily. The Soldier has to be the one that attacked them on the road. She remembered the way he drove and shot. Robotic.

Another subject of their tests.

"The woman," she shouts over the rising din of a ship under siege. "Where's the woman!"

He's covered in sweat. His eyes bulge as he shivers beneath her. "HYDRA won't risk her being free. Not with what's been done to her."

"Where," she shouts again.

He waves his hand in surrender, "Sp—specimens outliving their usefulness are sent to the in-incinerator."

Peggy's cold.

"They took her as soon as the man attacked." He sobs—it claws its way out of his throat, "I'm so sorry."

The bullet makes a tinny, hollow sound in the room. The sound waves clang against all the metal of the bulkheads and the floor. And the man goes slack between Peggy's thighs.

But she hasn't been the one to pull the trigger.

Again it's Yelena, there just away from her, eager to murder.

"I'm sorry," Yelena says. She looks pitying.

"Why?" Peggy's question is more a croak. It hurts to speak.

But Yelena looks like a nurse at the bedside of a war hero. "I knew you wanted him dead, but wouldn't be able to do it yourself." She comes closer. Kind. Warm. "I was just—"

"You were supposed to be in the engine room."

"I stopped the engines." And it's true. There's silence now.

"And you knew," her gun is heavy. She always forgets that. She's so used to the weight of it that she rarely remembers. Guns are heavy. "You knew where I was."

"I heard the gunfire."

She looks at the dead man. Brains and blood slowly pooling beneath his head. Hears the boom of Namor doing his part. "And they knew we were coming."

"Peggy—"

"As soon as they saw Namor they knew what was happening. They knew who was attacking. How Yelena?"

"They're HYDRA," she says it like it's a given. Like Peggy's a fool to ask. "They have eyes everywhere."

She lifts her gun. Yelena snapping into its sights. "They knew where Angie and I were that day by the lake too."

"Peggy," Yelena laughs like it's all so absurd. "I'm on your side."

"But never Angie's."

That's not the response Yelena expects and it slips, like a blade, right through all her armor.

It falls away to reveal that cold creature Peggy's kept too close. "She's a liability," she finally says.

"No Yelena, any trust I had in **you** was a liability."

She nods like it's a deserved barb. "So what now? Try and kill me?" There's fear there.

"I have better things to do."

Peggy heads for the door on the opposite side of the lab where German and Russian signs outline the direction to all sorts of important parts of the ship on that level. The word for incinerator especially stands out to her.

Maybe.

Her fingers tight on that pistol grip.

Maybe she won't be too late.

Yelena sighs is relief. Relaxes.

Which is certainly not why Peggy turns back around and shoots her in the leg.

####

She breaks into a run. Her feet slap against the metal grating. The vibrations rattle up her legs.

Yelena and that scientist both made it sound like it was too late, but Peggy can't be sure.

She won't be sure.

Not until she's seen for herself.

Yelena's cries of pain are distant now.

The boat dips to one side with a far off explosion and Peggy is thrown into the bulkhead. Her vision's black for just an instance and she shakes her head as she hears a door thrown open on the far end of the corridor.

Her gun comes up out of reflex but her finger falters on the trigger.

Because it's the Soldier emerging from a flaming room; that silver arm rippling in the firelight.

And he has Angie cradled in his arms.

He draws his own gun as fast as she's only ever seen Steve or Natalie draw a gun. His eyes reflect Peggy's own righteous fury. Something in him twitches.

Peggy steadies her pistol with her other hand and shouts, "Let her go!"

She can see Angie's dressed just in a hospital gown and she can see bright blood caking both arms up to the elbow. It's splattered on her gown too. It drips to the floor and the sound is so loud in Peggy's ear. Loud enough that it must be half imagined.

"Now!"

One of Angie's arms is around the Soldier's neck and it tenses at Peggy's shout. Then she slowly turns her head to look at Peggy with foggy blue eyes.

Peggy will not.

She will not cry.

The tears are still there and they're threatening to fall but she won't let them.

"English?"

Gun still on the Soldier Peggy focuses on her. Asks, "Are you all right?"

She wanted this reunion to be more than this. More intimate. More **right**. Instead it's all urgent and wrong.

Angie nods and pushes on the Soldier until he lets her down to stand on her own feet. "It's all right," she mumbles, "she's a friend."

The Soldier continues to train his gun on Peggy and it gives her a modicum of satisfaction. She couldn't be here for Angie but at least this…creature has tried.

At least it seems to care.

Angie tries to come closer and stumbles. The Soldier catches her by the arm and glares when Peggy tries to come forward to help.

"I'm fine," Angie says again. "Peggy's the good guys."

Whatever else this creature is it's conflicted now. It speaks softly in Russian that Angie seems to understand. Too softly for Peggy to hear at the other end of the corridor. Just a "she" and later "SSR."

Angie gives Peggy a pleading look before turning around to face the Soldier. Her hand comes up to cup his cloth clad cheek. And she murmurs too.

His eyes, blue, Peggy notes, are more frantic now.

Peggy's seen it before. A creature fighting its programming. Struggling against what it has been made into.

His hand trembles. The gun wavers.

Creatures like the Soldier are all taunt wire, and when they snap they harm what's closest. So Peggy can do nothing. Can say nothing. Has to stand there and let Angie play the wire. Keep it from fraying.

Then the door at the end of the corridor behind Peggy is exploding open and soldiers are pouring in with rifles out. She throws a smoke grenade that clouds the end of the corridor and sends the men into coughing fits. It isn't much, but it can stall them a little.

"There's no more time," she shouts at Angie and her Soldier. She stalks towards them. Starts to take Angie's arm. Stops when she sees the anger flare in the Soldier's eyes.

"We have to go," she whispers urgently.

Her hand itches just to **touch** Angie.

"There are too many," the Soldier says. He's still speaking Russian and his dialect is odd. It forces Peggy to work harder than usual to translate.

There's something familiar about him too. Something that tugs at the back of her mind. The skin around his eyes are dark with greasepaint and his hair is ruffled and in his eyes and there's that piece of black silk pulled tight across the bottom half of his face, but there's something…

"Who are you?"

He pegs her with a stare that demands to be understood, "Keep her safe Carter."

There's a time and place to sort out the mystery of the Soldier and this isn't it. Peggy pulls Angie away and the Soldier checks the clip in his gun before moving into the smoke with the sort of swagger that reminds Peggy of a man long dead.

It isn't the time.

She pulls Angie behind her and they run. And run. She fires when she has to and presses them into dark corners when it's more prudent and doesn't think of how close Angie is. How **alive**. Doesn't think about the way her damp skin is tacky against Peggy's fingers or the way she pants in her ear when they're pressed against the bulkhead and waiting for too many soldiers to pass.

Then they're finally on deck and explosions are causing the entire ship to undulate and Natalie and Namor are committing the sort of violence better kept to serials and funny pages.

"Holy smokes," Angie says breathlessly.

They don't have time for what Peggy does next, but Peggy has to turn around and pull Angie into an embrace or she might just go up in flames with the rest of the bloody boat.

Angie returns it. Her arms are tight around Peggy and her hands claw at her back. She whispers into Peggy's neck, "Took you long enough English."

"Had to pick up some friends."

Angie laughs. Then kisses Peggy like they're not in public and in the middle of a war zone. Her tongue is in Peggy's mouth and it's positively scandalous. And tremendously wonderful. She smells like antiseptic and blood and burned flesh and Peggy could care less.

For just the moment she hold Angie close. Let's her hand settle in her hair. Let's it just be the two of them all alone with a gorgeous view of a wide open sea.

Then Natalie is there and handing over another wetsuit that Angie puts on without blushing once. "Yea for theater," she mumbles as she pulls the suit over her bare chest.

Peggy thinks about complimenting her but realizes it would be inappropriate. They strap a rebreather onto her and Natalie tells her to just breathe in and out like normal and then squeezes Angie's arm.

That's as much affection as the girl is probably capable of and Angie shoots Peggy a look to let her know she's noticed too.

No one asks about Yelena.

They shimmy back down the rope—Angie surprisingly capable—and the turtle's surfaced long enough for them to all to climb aboard. Namor included. He hovers just above the shell and laughs at his victory against HYDRA. "You may rule the surface," he shouts, "but the seas are mine!"

"Would you hurry and get on the bloody turtle. I'd like to **not** get caught in the swell when that thing sinks."

He lands and glances at Angie. "She isn't much," he says.

Angie glares at him from behind her face mask and rebreather mouth piece, which earns a recoil.

Which…is more a reaction that anyone but Steve's ever earned from the man.

The water swirls around them as the turtle sinks back into the sea. Angie's got her arms around Peggy's waist and her face pressed to her back (or as pressed as it can be with all the gear they're wearing). Just before they're fully submerged she feels her spit out her mouth piece to say in a daze against Peggy's back,

"We're riding a turtle."


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Namor's people land them on the shore near Guz. He pretends to be gracious and carries Angie to the ground himself. Then Natalie leaps lithely down and throws one of Angie's arms over her shoulder and walks them towards the light of the base.

Peggy stays behind. Just to give her thanks. Angie glances back at her and seems to understand what's happening because she just nods and keeps walking.

"She is not just a friend," Namor observes.

Peggy bites her cheek.

"But she's also not a man. She can't even compete fairly for your affection."

"Denigrating her entire sex is hardly the way to a woman's heart," she sighs.

He tilts his head, sharp eyes still on Angie's back. "More a handmaiden."

"Please stop."

"Handmaidens are not worth a continent Peggy."

"Good thing she isn't one."

His arched brows soften, "I cannot think your world government will be pleased with the deal you made."

"They probably won't."

"But I expect you to honor it." His tone leaves nothing for discussion.

Peggy lifts her chin, "I'm a woman of my word Namor. By the decade's end you'll have your continent."

Its a gamble and she can see the way he has to swallow a sudden bout of petulant anger. He glares. Then he laughs. It's a haughty swashbuckling sword of laugh that booms as loud as cannons. "Decade's end."

"You're long lived. That's what—a sneeze and a day to your people?"

He shakes his head, "The surface is full of liars and cheats."

"And here you are madly in love with one."

"Not love I think." He appraises her. "Perhaps just respect."

It's a step down.

One she's glad for.

####

Peggy is escorted to the same room Angie and Natalie were taken to, but when she arrives there's just an exhausted Angie sitting on the cot with an IV in her arm.

And two guards unconscious on the floor.

"Where—"

Angie makes a flying motion with one hand and accompanies it with a sharp whistle, "As soon as the MPs turned their backs."

"You didn't help her did you?"

"She helped rescue me. Figured the least I could do was make sure she doesn't go up river for treason."

Peggy sighs.

"She's a good kid Peggy."

"And an assassin."

"They're still breathing." Angie leans forward, sudden concern etched on her face, "they are still breathing aren't they?"

Peggy checks for a pulse, "Seems so. She didn't by chance mention where she," Peggy mimics Angie with a whistle and whoosh of her hand.

Angie frowns, "I don't…I don't think so?" She shakes her head, "Sorry, most things are kind of foggy. Like that time at the Griffith when 4A brought moonshine home from Tennessee."

Peggy winces. One girl nearly went blind from that night and the moonshiner herself was evicted the next day.

She remembers thinking at the time that it was likely the only thing short of jet fuel that would have been able to get Steve drunk.

"Hey." Angie's looking at her from the bed. She's so curious. And concerned.

And alive.

Pale and worn and **alive**.

Peggy's not quite sure what to do. She's not accustomed to this measure of success.

Steve would give her a playful shove and tell her she's supposed to be the brave one.

She starts towards her. Stops. Her hands ball into fists.

The brave one wouldn't do what she wanted. She'd do what was right. Right for the woman sitting in that bed.

"I expect they'll want to speak to you."

"Yeah? Why do I suddenly get the feeling they're the only ones?"

Peggy shakes her head. "I…I do, it's just we—both of us will need to be debriefed. And I wouldn't want to compromise—"

"English." Angie's brow is furrowed. Peggy's left her confused. Which isn't unusual. Particularly early on she was often leaving Angie confused.

She sighs and stands tall. Steps over the men on the floor and takes a seat on the bed. Just out of reach. Far enough away that Angie would have to work to touch her with anything more than her leg. Her mouth keeps threatening to pull into a frown, but being the Oscar-winning actress she is she schools her entire face into a mask.

One Peggy can't bear to look at.

"I realize," she starts, "that you've kept me at arm's length despite my overtures because you are brave enough to admit what I couldn't."

Angie shakes her head. Opens her mouth to speak.

Peggy quickly holds her hand up. Not so high as to be an abrupt silencing gesture, but high enough to show Angie she needs to continue to speak.

She has to.

It's just like plucking stitches, she tells herself. Quick and clean and it will be over in no time.

"You're a tremendous actress with a career that puts you in the public eye, and I'm married, and a woman, and supposedly a master of spies."

She feels Angie's fingertips, cool and kind, on her wrist. Why is it **now** that she feels the need to reach out?

"You were abducted, and abused, and imprisoned because of me."

"I know."

Of course she knows. Of course she's figured it all out.

Angie's often been clever.

She closes her eyes so she doesn't have to look at her. It makes things easier. The fingers on her wrist make things harder.

"Then you know why, however much I care for you, I won't be back."

The fingers dig. Just for a moment. "Save me from a burning boat and leave me on the shore?"

She fidgets. Shrugs. "You've always been so fond of calling us a disaster Angie. I've just finally realized you were right."

MPs dash and in abort any further argument. They pull Peggy away and usher her to another room where, as if by magic, Colonel Phillips has arrived and is looking **less** than pleased.

The days that follow are a blur of shouting and berating and near firings.

And no Angie.

"She's gotta be debriefed," Phillips tells her. His tone is shockingly kind. "We gotta know what they did to her."

The benefactors of SHIELD, the shadowy World Council that governs their every action, are not as kind. They are not happy about Peggy's reign of terror against HYDRA. Two world class Leviathan trained assassins are on the loose and HYDRA's research element is in tatters and their sites destroyed. Nothing is recoverable. The only reason she still has a job, they say, is because she secured a HYDRA asset.

That's what Angie is to them.

An asset to be used. Poked and prodded and observed until they're done with her. Doesn't matter what the Director of SHIELD thinks.

Peggy doesn't see Angie again. They're transported to the United States separately and Peggy goes back to work. "You're too damn good to be drummed out on account of a woman," Phillips admits when she asks.

She hugs her children when she gets home and circles Daniel warily and they don't discuss the months—**months**—she's been gone. She wants to tell him it's normal. Wants to explain that this is why her own parents had her in boarding school as soon as she could walk. Wants to answer the unsaid accusations of bad parenting.

Of being a bad mother.

And wife.

Instead she works and smiles and acts like the last few months haven't happened.

At least until she's walking through the halls of SHIELD and finds a little weasely scientist carrying a tray of blood vials and walking the other direction.

She doesn't even need to see the labels on the vials to know to whom they belong and she doesn't stop walking. She marches. Her feet lead her directly to Phillips' office where Phillips is bowing his head against his steepled hands, and Howard is sitting on the edge of the desk and his new pet German from Research is on the couch leaning forward as though he were saying something that causes Phillips actual pain.

"Let her go," Peggy growls. Her words not lost even when she slams the door.

"Peg—"

"Now Howard."

"Told you she wouldn't be happy," Phillips says.

Howard stands up to defend what Peggy frankly finds indefensible. "She was worked over by HYDRA for over a month—"

"Precisely, and the last thing she needs is to be poked and prodded like a lab rat by her own countrymen!"

He smirks, "Technically this fella's German."

Normally, when Peggy punches Howard, it's a solid jab to the cheek. Enough to hurt, and maybe even swell, but it does no lasting damage.

This time she feels the cartilage of his nose crunch against her knuckles. He's thrown back into Phillips' desk and his hands fly up to protect his nose. Which has already begun to liberally stream blood.

Phillips glares hard at Peggy. Enough for her to feel duly chastised for an action for which she has no regrets. "You finished?"

She shakes her hand. Nods. "Yes sir."

He looks at Howard, "And you're letting the actress go?"

"Her blood results and EEG scans are bananas we need her—"

Phillips sighs, "Let the woman go before Carter rams her fancy heel right up your smart ass. Am I clear?"

Howard starts to protest, but he looks from Phillips back to Peggy and can only acquiesce. Weakly. "Peggy, you got to know it isn't personal—"

"No, it never is with you."

He flinches.

Her words leave him more bruised and broken than her fist ever could.

####

Work and family. The balance has waffled a tad over the years, but the two have always been Peggy's primary devotions. Super soldiers and Oscar-winning actresses aside.

Work and family.

They're a soothing routine she mires herself in.

She does not call Angie.

She can't bear it to reach out. Not after what's happened. Not after what Angie's endured under her watch.

So Peggy returns to work and family and she gets so very, very good at one and fails so miserably at another.

It's Daniel who finally looks at her from across the breakfast table and pulls the curtain away from her bit of awful theater. Simply says, "I think we should get a divorce."

The children are still upstairs and breakfast is on the table and Peggy's only just come in from work. There are dark circles under her eyes and every step she's taken has required calling on reserves she didn't know she possesses.

And when Daniel speaks it as comforting as a hot bath.

She slides into the chair opposite him with a sigh. Says nothing.

"You were gone for nearly two months," he explains, "and the only time you called was to check in on the kids."

"I knew you could take care of yourself."

He has a weak, but kind, smile for those words. Nicer than the one she offers up as she speaks.

"Are you chucking me out?" She's prepared to fight if he is. Though she isn't sure she has the energy to do it in the present moment.

Perhaps there's a motor lodge nearby. She should really investigate that—

He shakes his head, "No." Shrugs. "I thought about it." Laughs darkly. "But half this house was built by SHIELD."

More than half. Peggy's sure it could take the payload of a B-36 and little more would happen than the windows rattling.

Daniel holds up a key ruefully. "Got an apartment closer to work." He puts it gently on the table and pushes it towards her. "Figure it's better to give you a copy than find poor Janet trying to break in."

She won't tell him it would be good practice for the girl.

Instead she takes the key and feels, perhaps a little, stunned. The divorce. The break up itself. Everything. She understood it was coming intellectually. It had to after what she's done. Yet having a key in her hand, warmed from its stay in Daniel's pocket, makes it all so much more tangible.

They agree not to tell the twins immediately.

They agree to keep things quiet.

He goes to work.

The children are taken to school.

Peggy collapses onto the couch in her bedroom. It gives her a look into the half-empty closet.

She stares and stares and stares.

Then.

Sleeps.

####

In her dreams Angie's sitting on the edge of the couch and her hand is on Peggy's cheek and she's forgiven her and asking why it is they have to be so madly in love.

####

She wakes up in her rumpled work clothes and the clock far away on the bedside table reads after four in the afternoon. She realizes it was the squeal of her children playing in the backyard that woke her and it drags her mouth into a smile.

She changes into a pants and a button down shirt that's just a little too big and rolls the sleeves as she pads down the stairs barefoot.

The nanny's in the den putting away freshly polished silver Daniel's grandparents insisted on buying them and looks startled to see her employer home and dressed down.

"She said you were home, but I didn't believe her," she mutters.

Peggy raises an eyebrow, "She?"

"Your friend watching the children. When we got back from school she was coming down the stairs."

Peggy is sure a girlfriend just "popping over" is perfectly normal for many women. Unfortunately most of her girlfriends were actual girlfriends and nearly all of them have reasons to want to stab her with a knife.

She races through the house, her bare feet slapping on cold tile and plush carpets and lunges out into the yard, just shy of breathless.

Then stops. Toes digging into cool grass. Because Angie is sitting on a swing with sunglasses hiding half her face and her high heels piled with her purse on the ground. And she's smiling and playing with Peggy's children.

She's here.

She must hear Peggy because she looks up sharply. Her whole head whipping around. Her face is impossible to read with the sunglasses, but her smile is at least sunny.

Genuine.

She goes back to playing with the children and Peggy finds her feet carrying her over until she's sitting in the other swing and her son is sitting in her lap.

He's nearly too heavy for this sort of thing. He and his sister are both five and well on their way to six. His sister continues to play at pirate, jabbing a wooden cutlass at Angie and shouting about what a "scaryless bleeding landlubber" she is.

Peggy should tell her daughter to watch her language, but her children are both so American they ride bald eagles to kindergarten so she smiles and allows herself a measure of content and never ever questions why Angie Martinelli is sitting in her backyard and willingly playing house.

####

They dance around each other until dinner. Smiling. Chatting like the old gal pals the nanny assumes they are. Their hands sometimes touch and Peggy will gasp and Angie will look away, but it's all very quiet. Reserved.

Then dinner comes. That's when the nanny, who has accidentally acted as chaperone, leaves for the night.

Then Angie is looking at Peggy with a poker face that would earn her a job in any spy organization in the Northern Hemisphere. She's accepts the proffered drink with a soft "thank you" and is animated only when talking with the children.

With them she's Angie.

It's just the glances at Peggy that reveal some other mystifying and enthralling woman. At one point she winks at Peggy and she's so startled her knee flies up into the underside of the table and rattles her wine glass right onto its side.

When Angie laughs as Peggy mops up the mess she's enigmatic.

It's maddening. Because of course Peggy just wants to ask why she's come. Angie's thought they were doomed ever since the car they took broke down in rural New Jersey. She was particularly clear on her feelings in Italy when she'd whisper them between kisses and look at Peggy as though she needed her there and very far away all at once.

Peggy's given her the out. She's let her know it's okay. She's made the sacrifice that was needed so Angie could have a proper and healthy life.

But she's sipping her drink and behaving as mysteriously as any of the spies Peggy knows. The sphinx gave Greek heroes less trouble.

"Do you need help getting them ready for bed," she asks after dinner.

Peggy's son is already at the top of the stairs and she's got her daughter in her arms, her knobby knees poking into her ribs.

"We'll be fine," she says softly.

Angie nods. Squeezes Peggy's upper arm as though they're, the both of them, **something**. "I'll be waiting in the study then."

And she is. When the children are in bed and nearly asleep Peggy climbs back down the stairs. Too softly judging by the way Angie startles when she appears in her line of sight.

She's turned on the fire in the fireplace and poured brandy for the both of them, and until she sees Peggy she's staring into that fire and seeming to weigh all the troubles of the world in her head.

But then she's startling and snapping around and finally simply staring.

So long that they both might blush.

"Hi." A greeting as oblique as German code when whispered by Angie Martinelli.

Peggy doesn't know what to say so she takes her brandy and sits in the club chair opposite Angie. The space between them seems a chasm.

She nurses the drink.

Angie breaks this second silence by cutting straight to the heart of things. "Have to say I thought you were joking back in England when you left." She peers at Peggy. "Usually you spend a month and change trying to find a woman you don't up and leave her as soon as you got her."

"You were hurt because of me."

"I was hurt because some nut jobs kidnapped me."

"And they targeted you because—"

"Hitler invaded France. Or the Red Skull wanted to become a god on earth." Angie shakes her head. "Peggy whatever part you think you played does't matter. If I want to blame someone it's gonna be the guys who did the abducting."

"Like your Soldier acquaintance?"

She glances down at her drink, "I don't know. When your SHIELD friends were poking me like my ma's pincushion did they tell you about—" She taps her temple.

"I was told you didn't remember anything." That things had been irrevocably lost and other parts of her mind were now, fundamentally different. Enough that Howard still poured over the EEG reports every day in an effort to understand.

But they told her, too, that nothing presented in the other tests they subjected Angie too.

That Angie still seemed herself.

Angie nods. "All I've got is you and me in the car. The rest of it's just flashes I can't make sense of." She looks down with a winsome smile, "Which, I suppose, isn't so bad. If you're gonna be tortured best not to remember it right?"

Peggy can still see the blood streaked down her arms. And that chair.

"I'm sorry."

"I told you—"

"I know. I shouldn't blame myself. And I'm rational enough to understand that what's happened to you **isn't** my fault. But the fact of the matter is you were on that ship because I invited you into a war and then left you ill-equipped to wage it."

"So when you showed up in New York you should have had a rifle and some fatigues ready for me."

"No. I should never have invited you in the first place. You shouldn't have to fight this w—"

"And you should?"

"It's my job."

"Yeah. It's a job Peggy." She's peering at her. "Not a life, and right now it seems to me you're living it like it is."

"I have a family," she fires back.

"You do. You've got two gorgeous kids—"

"And—"

Angie tilts her head, "And Daniel left you. He called me a quarter of one to tell me."

"He was out of bounds."

"Probably. Think he's still stinging about how you'd rather spend a month getting rejected by me then in a bed beside him."

Peggy has to laugh, because otherwise she might blush and Peggy is an adult and does **not** blush.

There's a whisper of fabric and Angie is then just there. Kneeling in front of her.

"How did—"

Her questions of how Angie could possibly move so fast are stopped by brandy-brushed lips.

"Shut up and kiss me English."

"I thought—"

Angie's hand combs through Peggy's hair then pulls her close so they can kiss again.

And again.

And again.

Peggy likes kissing. She does. And she likes sex too. She's had all sorts of partners and found a way to waste quite a bit of her life by doing nothing more than kissing another person.

But kissing Angie is like coming home after the longest day. It's comfort and warmth.

And sweet. Even as ardent as Angie is, kneeling between Peggy's thighs and holding her close. With nails scratching at her scalp and teeth tugging at her lips. Even then she's sweet.

Wonderful.

God help Peggy she **loves** Angie Martinelli. In spite of all the very good reasons she shouldn't. In spite of how utterly impossible a relationship can be.

She loves her.

And not only desires her, but needs her.

Angie's kisses stop much like the flow of water down the side of a house after a rain. Her nose brushes against Peggy's before she opens her eyes and smiles at her.

She's still close. Her hand is still in Peggy's hair, but her fingers have relaxed and now just gently cup the back of her head. "There you are," she says. As if she's been searching for her. She darts in again for a quick reassuring kiss. "You know I'm here because I'm crazy about you don't you?"

Peggy swallows. Tries not to scan Angie's face to sort out if she's telling the truth and fails miserably.

One of Angie's hands has fallen onto Peggy's thigh and her thumb moves in lazy, confident circles. She watches her hand. Refuses to look at Peggy. "I've been spending so long really trying to not be. Reminding myself of how badly it could go. I kept telling myself we were a disaster English." She glances up and gives Peggy a sort of watery smile. "Then your husband calls and I come over here and accidentally watch you sleep for an hour and a half." With just a look she pleads with Peggy to understand. "And I think I could do that for the rest of my life."

She swallows. Her voice is quiet. "What are you saying Angie?"

"I'm saying disaster's a small price if I get to spend the rest of my days with you."

####

One day. Years later. Angie might regret what she said. Might consider disaster too high a price.

But that night she curls up naked in the arms of the woman she loves and listens to her heartbeat drum steadily and feels the rise and fall of her chest and thinks that disaster can try and wreck what she has.

But it'll have a helluva time doing it.

The End

Peggy and Angie and all the rest will return soon in part 3, The Man That Got Away.


End file.
